I can't sleep…
[…]
There were only numb mind tones,
thoughts clenched like little fists,
And syllables struggling to release their sense to my imagination.
I tried to get out of myself
But it was like emerging into a maze
[…]
~John Koethe, from “Partial Clearance,” North Point North: New and Selected Poems
Notes:
6:28am.
I hit the ignition, the middle aged lady groans but fires.
It’s 23°F and she’s not liking it.
You and me girl, still firin’. Going down with our boots on. Till death do us part.
’70s on 7 are spinning on Sirius.
Drums and Horns lead – and then the band comes in.
YOU only need a FEW bars, and you can feel it: HIT IT.
And I’m off…
Foot leans in on the accelerator.
Traffic in speed lane clears for the DK Express.
Head’s bobbin’. Shoulders’ rockin’. Karaoke winds up.
And here she comes… Continue reading “Driving I-95 S. With A Distant Fire.”
Make no mistake. Everything in the mind is in rat’s country. It doesn’t die. They are merely carried, these disparate memories, back and forth in the desert of a billion neurons, set down, picked up, and dropped again by mental pack rats. Nothing perishes, it is merely lost till a surgeon’s electrode starts the music of an old player piano whose scrolls are dust. Or you yourself do it, tossing in the restless nights, or even in the day on a strange street when a hurdy-gurdy plays. Nothing is lost, but it can never be again as it was. You will only find the bits and cry out because they were yourself. Nothing can begin again and go right, but still it is you, your mind, picking endlessly over the splintered glass of a mirror dropped and broken long ago. That is all time is at the end when you are old – a splintered glass. I should never have gone to that place, never have accepted the engagement, never have spoken….
~ Loren Eiseley, “The Rat That Danced” from “All the Strange Hours. The Excavation of a Life.”
Image: Broadstreet.com.au via Starwill
A dunlin searches for food as it’s golden brown reflection is portrayed in the golden light. Photograph by Mario Suarez Porras from Oviedo, Asturias, Spain. This was a NatGeo Top Shot in the Daily Dozen, Nov 10, 2015. Source: Nationalgeographic.com (Thank you Carol)
