Bob Carlton
Emptiness is formSmell of rain drying
on hot pavement, feel of burning city-worn eyes; these things, and the abstractions follow. We fidget before the bald facts of sensation. Space is there we think to be filled. The metropolis so shapes our immediate world the wind sounds different on Tuesday than it does on Sunday. [This is not a trick of the mind, a trope of the soul, or a mere matter of conditioning. There is no empty space. The very air is patterned by our behavior. Remember, we do geologically in seconds what would take millions of years without our presence] The migrations have ended; the last ripples are stilled. For now. Until the day comes we know again what it is to be blessed by the weeds we have driven from our lives. Kawazu no otoSound of frogs
hitting the water as I stroll around the pond-- a sound not like the slide of turtles or the strike of fish. Frogs at dusk can only be known through absence and indirection, a body of sound alone, the songs of mating and the splash of flight. Orion falls...Orion falls
face first westward his dog dutifully after |
CellaringThe wine sits
in silence and grows into its fulness. The wine sits in silence and discloses nothing of its present nature. The smile of its finest moment is hidden-- so also the frown of its deep decline. The Blind DescentLegions march the earth--
they are not ours. The steady clap of doom fails to register. Foundations slowly fold back down to their ground unnoticed. The cries of birds do not signal the passing of America to unlistening ears. Unmoving cars caught in city traffic cough out apocalyptic prophecies-- only the dying trees can hear. All across the levees…All across the levees
the green that is only spring arrives-- young leaves in the still low light, a color found no other time-- the long grasses wave in the first southern winds, endlessly flowing without destination. Crossing over the river into the city you see so much less than this (like the first man who understood fire thought: we will never see so many stars again). |