What is there to say
when the sky pours in the window
and the ground begins to eat its figures?
We sit like dummies in our kitchen, deaf
among enormous crumplings of light.
Small wonder each thing looms
crowding its edge.
In silent movies everyone overacts a little.
It would be nice to breathe the air inside the cello.
That would satisfy one
thirst of the voice. As it is
only your ribcage speaks for me now,
a wicker basket full of sorrow and wish, so tough
so finely tuned we have often
reivented the canoe
and paddled off.
It would be nice to write the field guide for those riverbanks,
to speak without names of the fugitive
nocturnal creatures that live and die in our lives.
Don McKay, "Another Theory of Dusk" in "Field Marks"
On October 24 2006
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