Is this that? Let go. Sameness troubles me.
Table. Chair. Whatever. I know when I see it.
Things come and they go. Think of Langlois
and the Cinémathèque. Or the library at Alexandria.
These persistencies not of memory but the imagination.
Not what was lost. But that it was there.
The musical savant makes me wonder.
Is music simply tick-tock? Something
lacking ambiguity? Never fuzzy however
lush. Tone mashed upon tone like a platitude.
What does it mean when you dream a dream
where the place is not the place
and the people there not the people?
Is their anonymity a poem? A secret passage?
In a library. The book case swings open.
Here transgression is obscured and sleep awakes.
The girl is fourteen, maybe fifteen. Her brother, say, ten.
I catch sight of them. Think I know who they are.
Gone. Then they reappear. Did I see this the other day or
dream it. Same pair? How did I not see their utter beauty?
Not thinking. About stuff. Clear.
Plate-glass mind. My hesitation to mention it.
Or say loss of appetite.
And mean: “loss of soul.”
Glitter of anticipation. Slant light. Momentary
car up the drive. But not. Breeze. Afternoon.
Can I get these few lines down? Before
he arrives?
Apparently the one thing they’re not
telling us about desire is that
it is its own fulfillment whether we
stand in its way, deny, or flee.
Not sure what to do about it. The mention
of Pindar. Sun tangled in branches. Dogs barking.
A train. These edges symmetries disguised as
asymmetrical arise in gaps or lurk
in distracted moments to kick start the rhapsodic.
Did I eschew closure, deemed it folly
no less a fool for doing so. Stupidly thinking
metaphor was color. Blue blue. Red red.
Storm past. Still dark sky blends into
dusk. A rightness to it all.
But only now that my gut returns to normal.
Something set it wandering.
Suddenly all my soul in its care
washes and scrubs the poison without much
success. Then a sudden “aptness” draws
home the absence of well-being.
from KintsugiFind more by Thomas Meyer at the library
Copyright © Thomas Meyer
Used with the permission of Flood Editions.