- “The man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”
- J. Joyce
- 1.
- It was right
- the first time,
- or no,
- it didn’t matter,
- or being prone
- to make the wrong mistakes.
- 2.
- As I went to sleep
- the rain pelted the roof,
- the tin tapped the time
- away like pattering feet
- through the night.
- I awoke to that sound,
- that same hurry
- and thought the rain
- had rained
- this hard rain
- all night—and still
- was coming.
- The sun glanced through the window
- and the rain was gone
- but the sound
- remained,
- as it dawned on me:
- The trickle of yesterday’s creek.
- 3.
- The man sat at the table
- in the restaurant,
- polishing his silverware,
- “putting on a new set of microbes.”
- One spoon, one fork, one knife, one plate,
- one meal to be devoured,
- one microbe more or less.
- It’s all a matter of minutes,
- one’s method, or one’s madness.
- To eat or be eaten is not much
- to choose from.
- For every future there is a void
- which must be filled with a past
- that is heavy with the guilt
- of existence. Every action
- demands an equal, demands a time
- and place, demands that somehow
- it will escape into the sublime
- and thus free itself of
- the nagging reality of microbes
- in your soup, microbes on your
- silverware, microbes on your
- hankerchief, microbes even
- in your mouth.
- 4.
- There is little that can be called
- truth.
- There is a covey of past lives
- that hovers in the air between us.
- We cast the past aside—
- the remainderings of a life
- no longer lived.
- A tide designed to drift beneath the moon.
- For every ebb there is a neap,
- for every step, we stop and weep
- through some sentimental reach—
- remember or regret—
- the sounds of dawn
- the sigh of tides,
- some moment in the mind,
- the autumn leaves in winter’s wind,
- the rain on the roof,
- the name too common
- to your ear, too familiar,
- too near your window,
- too near the silent pounding,
- too near the part
- you’ve played.
- It is merely a matter of minutes,
- and yet?
- does the rain remain?