A Fine Disinterest, a reading

A Fine Disinterest (with Tania P)

Perhaps as we age, we cultivate a fine disinterest in the attraction of objects until they no longer catch at us like brambles or hang on us like burrs – voices, bells, birdsong; health of body and peace of mind; the wild thumping of my heart at the brush of your fingertips – all flakes that dissolve into a fine grey mist at the slightest touch.

Maybe the body, thus transfixed, discarding the desire to name, to quantify, to recall – recalls its former bliss of first vibrations when one heartbeat set the pace for the one still forming its chambers, darkly delicate and writhing in quantifiable syllables of time meted by the breath of the host.

Beautiful Unity, a reading

Perhaps just after the rose is cut and set into a crystal vase it brings summer into any room – yet one by one as petals drop they disperse the beautiful unity that the rose once was. Fragrant, fragile wings that leave their cherished bloom – each a poem that unfolds with a wisdom waiting to be pressed between the pages of any book.

Maybe the finder, years later, a mother herself, re-reads the passages housing the near translucent petals, willing answers to questions she failed to fathom asking back then, standing rooted and vibrant in the rear view mirror of her mother’s passing, which passes back to her in the skin of this morning’s dream, outlines disintegrating but pulsed by a memory of burl trunked but steady love.

The End, a reading

The End (with Tania P)

Perhaps we put a period at the end of each sentence to curtail the fear of the dark that lies beyond that dark with its unknown duration before light returns. Outside, his warble silver and pocked as the half-moon impaled on branches, the mockingbird. On the other side of the windowpane, the sleeper hesitates.

Or maybe each perceived ending is a pivot that at best gives us pause; each dark mark a turning point. Silvery flashes of fish swerve up their natal river in a rush to the spawning ground as the luminous sleeper unconsciously beckons the pale sunlight of dawn, waving goodbye to festive stars and sweeping the darker slices of night through a gap in the clouds.