As If the Trees By Their Very Roots Had Hold…

Strange to remember a visit, really not so

Long ago, which now seems, finally, past. Always, it’s a

Kind of obvious thing I guess, amazed by that

Cycle: that first you anticipate a thing & it seems

Far off, the distance has a weight you can feel

Hanging on you, & then it’s there – that

Point – whatever – which, now, while

It’s happening seems to be constantly slipping away,

“Like the sand through your fingers in an old movie,” until

You can only look back on it, & yet you’re still there, staring

At your thoughts in the window of the fire you find yourself before.

We’ve gone over this a thousand times: & here again, combing that

Same section of beach or inseam for that – I’m no

Longer sure when or exactly where – “& yet” the peering,

Unrewarding as it is, in terms of tangible results,

Seems so necessary.

Hope, which is, after all, no more than a splint of thought

Projected outwards, “looking to catch” somewhere –

What can I say here? – that the ease or

Difficulty of such memories doesn’t preclude

“That harsher necessity” of going on always in

A new place, under different circumstances:

& yet we don’t seem to have changed, it’s

As if these years that have gone by are

All a matter of record, “but if the real

Facts were known” we were still reeling from

What seems to have just happened, but which,

“By the accountant’s keeping” occurred years.

Ago. Years ago. It hardly seems possible,

So little, really, has happened.

We shore ourselves hour by hour

In anticipation that soon there will be

Nothing to do. “Pack a sandwich

& let’s eat later.” And of course,

The anticipation is quite appropriate, accounting,

For the most part, for whatever activity

We do manage. Eternally buzzing over the time,

Unable to live in it…

“Maybe if we go upaways we can get a better

View.” But, of course, in that sense, views don’t

Improve. “In the present moment” (if we could only see

It, which is to say, to begin with, stop looking with

Such anticipation) what is enfolding before us puts to

Rest any necessity for “progression”.

So, more of these tracings, as if by some magic

Of the phonetic properties of these squiggles… Or

Does that only mystify the “power” of “presence" which

Is, as well, a sort of postponement.

These Squiggles: A discussion of “As if the Trees by Their Very Roots Had Hold of Us” by Charles Bernstein