“Approaching Sundown,” by Jorie Graham
“There is suddenness / to all surfaces.”
there is suddenness
to all surfaces—
in the fields
forwardness is
ensnared, & all
stops. The lawn
is a god. A door in the trees
opens. Corridors appear everywhere
as light & the light says
you want to live &
nothing
happens. The lowering light
gathers in the waist of
the day, it glows
on bark on chips of
rock & right there in the upcurl
of the dried leaf on that blue
chair & also there
on the live leaf at the branch-tip of
that young oak
which had just moments ago
sashayed in bits of wind & is now
brutal in its
stillness.
A towhee flies off & leaves behind
this.
We do not exhale.
It is possible consciousness dis-
appears from the atmosphere
taking with it the crazed
minutes
running towards the end
only because they were
let loose
once—& you cannot strip away
this skin which holds u
in, you cannot hide
from the rush
which will start up again
as soon as u ex-
hale, but for now
pain awakens to find itself
not pain, whatever is
hatching us is
done & falls
away & we are
dropped
down. The incubation is
suddenly over.
That anything occurred before is
erased. Do not
forget this
when u return
to that world
where the casting about of the soul
which lives in the shadows
begins again,
where the leaves swirl up
into the twisting torso
of the wind
which wants once again to peer
in all the other
directions—
where the cicadas
which had stopped unexpectedly,
as the promiscuity of
glancing had
stopped—as
wanting & knowing
had—begin again—but for now, for the
impossible eternity of this
second,
whatever there is
which is all there is
stands unbroken before us.
This is drawn from “Killing Spree.”