October 2011

                                                    I
The chair from Goodwill smelled of mildew.
I sat with Sister Ann, a Franciscan.
In her small office, at the Cenacle Retreat House,
right off Dixie Highway in Lantana, Florida,
I began my story—
it was an interview, much of life is...

The field blank in snow. But I mean this page.
Now print mars the surface to make surface
Seen. Sheen only error brings. Perfect rage
So the sun rises. Rage is your slow practice
That makes of every day another day
In whose gathering promise...

The holes have
almost left the
sky and the blanks
the paths—the
patches next to
natural, corroborated
by the incidental
sounds of practical
activities and crows,
themselves exhibiting
many of the earmarks
of the actual. This
must have happened
many times before,
we must suppose.
Almost a pulse
if we could speed
it up: the repeated
seeking...