No Never

124 NO NEVER JESSICA GARRATT What is it about gradations of space, variegated but joined, somehow—textured and on-time— the foreground edging the middle ground lapping the foot hills and the sunset—so many restless layers binding and bound, unbound, inbound, outbound— that get inside and set (or try). They get inside and make time pile up in drifts or dunes, so everything shows through at once—my life—in a shudder—like the smoke-grey stutter of clouds hanging their crags on the blur of further clouds, lavender, behind the hills. And on the water stretching its palm diagonally beneath, activity creases the surface. Activity cruises the parallel deep I can’t see, can’t know, not really, and I’m alive, and in the middle of things, surrounded by the near and the beyond, and never wanting to be gone—No never wanting to be gone— ...