More Nothing Here

Today’s work is another brief lyric, and again it focuses on a turn, a change in perspective. The larger change that is underway will mean a lot of letting go, and probably not much taking on of replacements. Life has always revolved around clearing space for work, literary work; I am not sure what I am clearing space for now, only that it will happen, and that I should know more soon.

In the meantime, I am here to write it down, whatever it is.

7 March 2021

7

Here

The more subtle hearing beneath the old hearing

is suddenly humming along with the air

and I know what it means. I will stand in the clearing

and from a faint distance see someone appear

and then watch as he simply dissolves in my vision

as well as my dreams of the future. That ‘he’

was someone who cast a long shadow, a wizened

and wearying revenant sailor whose sea

had sounded its last warning blessing. Poor sailor–

he knew he was doomed from the outset, but so

obsessive was he, even sky like a jailer

of beautiful weather made gravity grow

and his tiny craft motionless. Now he is crying,

but what she who waited so long really hears

is an outbreathing vastly more subtle. She’s trying–

she hears it again: This is where he appears.