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158 A SLIM VOLUME TAKEN INTO THE PROVINCES I have to leave early in the dark and hungry to avoid crossing the snow as the noon burns the crust into an un-servable lake slush instead of the crisp bridge that would be in order to get me over the ridge My journal is already laundered clean of my words and my instructions have dissolved into a white mash a washed bone ball rolled into itself of all I have in the world in my pocket The ink is thin the paper is poor my eyes balance on the pale words around which a stream flows almost erasing the way across the idea Shadows the black flowers of the light self -sowing through the trees dark gardens of midnight for the gray-white morning hour of blindness in print miles before I am to arrive here 159 To approach the waiting milestone dims whatever else of its lantern ’til only the placed light there is on me. In this light barely but used to it I can make out the staggered columns of my account as if back through weren’t the real distance: the thin chest flag pinned on by each ridge the titled introduction taking your coat each storm. My letters and ribbons have been the natural— strengths on their way to the more— natural weaknesses— and loss. yet— I wonder where I thought I was going— to ’ve done what you must pass examinations for before I took any. ...

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