67. The Weight of It

Most of everything
is waiting. In between,
something happens.
Sleep interrupted by
sight, and the forms
of doing and making.
The article of all your
clothes is “the” and
sunlight caught in
gauze curtains so that
you can hold it in
your hands, can
measure its weight.

Every time you do it
it seems accomplished
as fact, and is, but
every making is not
the same (and never
a same). What you
make unrecorded and
without attention,
the accidental doings
of a life, don’t count.
And numbers matter,
so it is you have two
small boys with you.

When you sleep, you
fill with all these im-
pressions of your life,
whatever leaves an
imprint upon you,
whatever you cannot
express or remember
afterwards. So much
life, this sleeping life,
a waiting, forward to
something, which
might simply be what
waking brings to it.

In the process of running
there is the waiting.
Actions may move you,
the muscle of the calf,
of the thigh, the foot
hitting, rising, then
hitting again, so that
the illusion of forward
is maintained. Your
heart tells you so, your
need for breath. But it is
the finish that is the
doing, that is the done.

Boy in a blanket, on a
morning past his birthday,
and he seems whole and
his eyes wander to show
his being. You can see him
inside his eyes. When
they glisten and move,
when they settle into place
upon your own eyes, you
can see who he is, even if
he is only waiting, even
though he is only waiting
for you to make it happen.

Grass is also a process,
growing upward to be
shorn down into place,
it has all the characteristics
of desire: interminable,
tenacious, unquenchable,
undiminishable in focus.
What is green and growing
at your feet can be cut
down but cannot disappear.
It grows into the shape
of waiting, being a making
that cannot be undone.

The shapes of things come
before your eyes as if
projections from another
plane. How could such
things, with such clarity,
exist within this murky
realm of ours? this place of
waiting? And how do you
make out the outlines of
these things before you:
boy, towel, white porcelain
bowl, mother, the various
forms that objects take?

Of the six of us, you were
the only born on an odd-
numbered year, as if un-
balanced, but not at all.
Numbers are important,
but they need not always
tell the truth, or even
suggest it. Given the space
between your birth and
now, you have many more
numbers to be concerned
with, and plenty of waiting
before it all can be done.