of something else kept awake by silence.

order, lyric, black words on white paper evoking

redness, a life archs from the straight arrow of proceeding

in this way of defiance. so milk rises to bread. so weather raises

the clock. the simple vehicle of sleep transporting us to tomorrow,

while unmade sheets of text intimate at what can be laid to rest. I am

thinking of jacques-louis david, who drew his pale, thinking figures nude

before painting clothing on them, or how someone once told me in kindness

that having daughters was the only way to heal from the loss of a mother.

there is an ethics in all of this—in the meeting of branch and rightness

and outburst and idea, this impossible motion moving stillness. writing rain

to write the land it falls upon, to write the river fecund suddenly with storm,

and the girl running home with the collar of a jacket pulled over her head,

with the piano heard somewhere playing prelude op. 28 no. 15, because

chopin heard the rhythm of drops on his roof in a dream, and believed

himself to be drowning. therein lies it. illusion. declaration. the music.