Fray

 
Photo via Operation Eden

Fray
By Carl Phillips

There it lay, before me, as they had
said it would: a distance
I'd wish to cross,

then try to, then leave
off wishing. Words like arc,
and trajectory. And push. The words

themselves over time
coming to matter
the way, in painting, color does: less,

finally, than the gesture
each stroke
memorializes.

A kind of sleep
that will look like death,
they said,

A kind of waking that will look
bewildered.
I woke,

as it were. I was not
bewildered. The distance as uncrossed
as it had been,

but now a clarity—like that
of vision. A kind of crossing.
Parts that the light

reached, relative
to everything else, what the light
kept missing. Spirea

in a wind; wind in the spirea's
leggy branches—I could make
distinctions: weeping

spruce; weeping maple. I could love you
as I had loved you—as only
humans can love each other: it's

a human need,
to give to shapelessness
a form.

[ via bookofjoe ]

Comments

[danbarkley]

Hey Everyone!

My name is Dan Barkley and I am a law student at the Seattle University School of Law. I also work as one of the Content Development Editors for the Seattle Journal for Social Justice. We are currently working on an issue devoted to the continuing effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Because we are an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the mission of furthering social justice issues, we often print poetry and other creative artwork, and it is in this regard I am contacting you. I'm hoping someone (like you, or someone you know) might 1) be interested in having your work featured, or 2) have any ideas of writers who would like their New Orleans and Katrina-related work to be featured in our journal.

We would need submissions by October 24, and I would be very appreciative of any leads you could send me.

Best,

Dan Barkley
Content Development Editor
Seattle Journal for Social Justice

[phigedarby]

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