To the moon, I whisper, This? She answers, This. That isn’t it. That isn’t what I want to hear. And so I go under the house, where I know she doesn’t shine. I go and count the beams holding up the world. The furnace entertains a bluish flame. I watch. Tomorrow, there will be crowds of grass. All dry and whispering, The, the, the. It is the wind that makes them so articulate. Otherwise, they too would be so dumb. It is the wind the makes the trees stand bold against the sky. I ask my shadow what he thinks of this. And he, who wanted everything, points to another shadow overhead. I should have known it would end like this. It seizes me, and takes me up. I watch my shadow run along the grass. First it glides and then it disappears.
answers
What Seeking Means
Whole days feel like funerals. Nights come and go. Days too long for recording. I go, and asked the mountain top, Yes? And then it occurs to me. The wind is a thing on a list of things, too. Still, who can feel good facing a new direction, when the old one seems so here, so present? I wrote a thousand stories in the book. The book assumed the characteristics of its writer, and when I looked it wasn’t me. It wasn’t the man who initially put his pen to paper. I called for experts to test the results. And they did. And I asked them, Well? The answers they gave were satisfactory, but just. And just… Tonight, I seek to step out of my house. Seeking is enough. Seeking means this isn’t enough. And just as I am about to die, I ask, What else? And finally the words of a book I used to know by heart come rushing in to fill the waste. This isn’t hell, but paradise…
A Story from the Flood
The rain had something to say. It said it all day. What choice did I have? I listened. I wondered if it were a big bird. I wondered if that flapping were its wings. But then I understood, it was the wind that made all the noise, and so it seemed the wind was a bird. Then what was the rain? It woke me in the night. That much I knew. And I followed its directions. I descended the stairs, and going floor by floor asked every shadow, What? And sometimes the shadows answered, and sometimes they didn’t. Later, much later, I woke in the deepest part of the house, where the water had pooled. It smelled sweet like the earth, and as I stood there it rose. Soon it would be past the meridian. Soon I would drown. But then I thought, So. And I knew that I had achieved what I had come to achieve. I swam to the surface, where the woman I love moved like a swan on the flood. She knew something, too. I followed in her wake to find out what. Love? I said, and she said, Love. I followed her until we reached the roof.
One Whose Name Is Writ In Water 