Sunday, July 10, 2005
TREE LIMBS DOWN
the poverty of having everything is not
wanting anything: I trudge down the mall halls
and see nothing wanting which would pick me
up: I stop at a cheap $79 piece of jewelry,
a little necklace dangler, and it has a diamond
chip in it hardly big enough to sparkle, but it
sparkles: a piece of junk, symbolically vast;
imagine, a life with a little sparkle in it, a
little sparkle like wanting something, like
wanting a little piece of shining, maybe the
world's smallest ruby: but if you have everything
the big carats are merely heavy with price and
somebody, maybe, trying to take you over: the dull
game of the comers-on, waiting everywhere like
moray eels poked out of holes: what did Christ
say, sell everything and give to the poor, and
immediacy enters; daily bread is the freshest
kind: dates, even, laid up old in larders, are
they sweet: come off sheets of the golden
desert, knees weak and mouth dry, what would
you think of an oasis, a handful of dates, and
a clear spring breaking out from under some stones:
but suppose bread can't daily be found or no
oasis materializes among the shimmers: lining
the outside of immediacy, alas, is uncertainty:
so the costly part of the crust of morning
bread is not knowing it will be there: it has
been said by others, though few, that nothing
is got for nothing: as I am reconciled I
traipse my dull self down the aisles of
desire and settle for nothing, nothing wanted,
nothing spent, nothing got.
--A.R. Ammons
We've moved -- and it is a long story, so I won't
tell it right now. Tedious, difficult, exhausting,
really not what I thought we'd be doing with
May and June -- but we have let go of so much stuff
and are much more organized, on the other side of
all that.
I'm going to post this photo taken from our front
porch a few days ago. I'll try to be more regular
keeping up with the blog this summer, since there
is so much going on all the time. Let me know if
you like the rainbow....