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122 H u r T L e it is possible to feel my life, in a quiet ecstatic helplessness , as a long slow hurtle through the forms of things. —Robert Hass eight years i ran the hurdles, with enviable form but not much speed, those white rectangles three steps apart. on the starting block i looked down through the shrinking windows to the end. The gun. The burst of muscle, right leg out over the hurdle and the left coming behind, reaching for the next white wood, March-april-May parceled out in sixteen-second afternoons. since then, i hurtle slowly through the forms of things, bewildered, now and then ecstatic, a doorway in, a window out. a garden promised on a full 12 white skirt, the far thin notes of a whitethroated sparrow. Can supper be a form? or a priest splashing dogs, canaries, snakes with holy water? The formal rails of a spanish train, child broken, heart trapped in dust. and then the wild and woven birds of otavalo. now, i’m framed by the cones of city lights that come on one by one, reflecting from the glass of empty shops. no traffic, but a yellow blinker. i imagine i can see a thin white ribbon where the street curves left. ...

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