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Sport 19: Lightworks
Summer Under Rafters—the Humility Variations
Summer Under Rafters—the Humility Variations
When you've escaped, there's a quietness,
and possibility, even, of the first person.
Slowly the way unwinds, comes then
the sunrise and a private appointment.
I've returned to the lake for a long stay,
my attempt at the monastic life,
renting an old farmhouse among trees.
In the attic lie five abandoned typewriters.
They remind me this is a kind of station,
the site where others have achieved closure,
the end of a thesis, a novel, a memoir.
What does it mean to escape? Each morning,
you walk to the pier, you take the longest way,
fighting yourself, wearing holes in your shoes.
Closure, of course, is elusive.
You walk to the pier and back, you climb the stairs,
you think of all those books in the library,
the solitude that produced each one,
everywhere people along going almost crazy.
And all we ever want is to enter the conversation.
A flock of Canada geese pass overhead,
they are so low you hear the rustle of wings,
such enormous birds, flight should be impossible.
The trick is to become oblivious, blind,
to cast off the world, rise above the trees,
let writing become habit, a thing unexamined.
You return to the quietness, the attic.
Escaping yourself, you take flight.