Camping And Stolen Photos

 

Is there a better thing than loneliness?

To hum without being heard,

Distributing time to the shadows

And disappearing into each step

 

calendar of murmurs

vague caresses about the planet and its water

we could have confused words

but there were doors open

confetti in the midst of darkness

gentle ways

to swoon in a corner with she who

put her tongue in my mouth

-Nicole Brossard

The Grind

A girl is a girl until she is a woman,

Which is more how she

Enters a room

Than lust

We met so many times I forgot

To forget your name

And I think you forgot to

to fake the same

we parted in July

unable to speak fully

as explosions colored the sky

-------------------------------------------

you remain despite all this;

Which is strange

Because ‘all this’ is stretching

into open air

and cannot be contained

By the length of your hair

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Jack Gilbert 1925-2012 RIP

The greater purpose of life involves tossing things into the air, watching them rise into space then letting them spin uncontrollably until they strike the ground. To set something into motion and witness it react completely out of your control. To both make motion and be completely unable to stop it.