Sand Theory: Poems

Essay on Craft

75 Essay on Craft 1 Creation requires some sense of the casual because no one wakes formally. 2 The land always dawns on itself, but we never wake to ourselves. 3 Acorns drop like thrown dice to the deck, then scutter a brief while, like failed tops, then nothing falling down there, then, as always, a few more. 4 Minor grievances are doubly unnerving because they seem to signify that our suffering is just as minor. 5 Hope, in any case, seems firmly isolated from its staggering circumstances. 76 6 The rich, verdant pageantry of the senses only renders the words that much more arid and blank and severe. 7 Mother-loss and father-loss turn out to be actually two of the more cozy corners in a filthy raucous jailhouse of all loss. 8 As for comic omissions, who cares what the names were and whose faces glowed like moons at curtain call but the people out there, 9 who only had a handful of decades to step inside? 10 Desire, appeal, friendship, safety in numbers. 11 But there’s fear here and there the world around, and some challenge far greater than those posed by either popularity or loneliness or infotainment. 77 12 I try to summon it all the time in a way that doesn’t serve mean purposes. 13 That is, I try to tell it what to do. 14 It is not always a kind relationship. There are moments when kindness is not called for, and the truth that this is so makes kindness itself seem spectral and purposeless and out of sorts. 15 I tell you that I don’t always feel an express purpose, sometimes there is nothing before me. 16 What does it mean that words can be lined up to best the best and leave the illiterate to die? 17 What does it mean that you have to slow down to get anywhere? What if you stopped moving altogether? 78 18 Then this: this: we must place it here even if we are blind to the outcome, even if we never know the person who might have been seeking the same space in time, even if we never meet. ...