November 2011
3 posts
October Funeral
wwnorton:
The world is shedding its thousand skins. The snake goes naked, and the needles of the pine fall out like the teeth of a comb I broke upon your hair last week. The ghosts of dead leaves haunt no one. Impossible to give you to the weather, to leave you locked in a killed tree. No metaphysic has prepared us for the simple act of turning and walking away.
Linda Pastan, from...
eyes that read safe.
It’s all happening, you tell yourself. It’s happening. It’s here. This is it.
You tell yourself, this is it. If this wave crests, this is it.
This is what your animal legs have been trained for.
Your wild heart was born for.
You won’t be crushed. In eyes that held safety.
You will not drown. In eyes that read safe.
We do it to ourselves again and again.
(The heart only needs a small...
