The only downside of doing this project is that it makes me so aware of the length of the days that now I know I have reached the apex. From here the days get incrementally shorter. Driving in Chicago at 5 this afternoon the sky got dark like a winter evening but it was only a thunder storm and we were still able to linger late in the evening light on a beautiful deck admiring the clouds trees and deep greens and depth of color in the sky.
No one--
not the wind in the leaves, not
the leaves in the sky--can promise
permanence, no one
gets all the days, even if it seems
that we are the ones
writing the book,
even if it seems
that we are the ones
who made each leaf. Inside
each leaf
more leaves, inside these trees
more trees, some so old they threaten
the roof, some so tiny we will need
to keep the deer from them. Each leaf is not
a word, each branch not
a sentence, yet
the wind is saying something--inevitable?
unlikely?--even if impossible to perfectly
translate. Now imagine these trees as
a roomful of books, each book spills from its
stack--remember
each hour alone, reciting the alphabet,
marveling at how the letters cluster, how each
comes with its mouthful of sound--until
a word somehow entered you, until it
somehow led
to this--perfect day, perfect sentence.
Nick Flynn, from "Epithalamion," The American Poetry Review (vol. 43, no. 3, May/June 2014)
not the wind in the leaves, not
the leaves in the sky--can promise
permanence, no one
gets all the days, even if it seems
that we are the ones
writing the book,
even if it seems
that we are the ones
who made each leaf. Inside
each leaf
more leaves, inside these trees
more trees, some so old they threaten
the roof, some so tiny we will need
to keep the deer from them. Each leaf is not
a word, each branch not
a sentence, yet
the wind is saying something--inevitable?
unlikely?--even if impossible to perfectly
translate. Now imagine these trees as
a roomful of books, each book spills from its
stack--remember
each hour alone, reciting the alphabet,
marveling at how the letters cluster, how each
comes with its mouthful of sound--until
a word somehow entered you, until it
somehow led
to this--perfect day, perfect sentence.
Nick Flynn, from "Epithalamion," The American Poetry Review (vol. 43, no. 3, May/June 2014)
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