This
book is a barn burning, erasing the beams that stood in front of the big yellow
moon.
This
book is a microscope, rescued from a box in the attic of your childhood.
This
book is a tender young beech leaf yearning to know the sun.
This
book is a grandfatherly archetype, playing games with magic in the middle of
the night.
This
book is a wanderer. It likes to go places without names, places in between the
places on the maps.
This
book is neither a telegram nor a text message.
This
book is a skinny bear emerging from the grotto in the forest, hungry for grubs
and cat food.
This
book is an alligator’s leg pushing away from logs in the courtyard pond.
This
book is a wild thing trying to be tame.
This
book is something like a mystery or a riddle. Its pages are neither gray nor
blue. They carry a texture like depth, a seriousness that gets behind language
and shoves it around.
This
book is a foxtail with a bristly tip, given as a gift.
This
book is a cloud of brown-headed cowbirds full of corn and winter.
This
book is a travelogue, a clumsy try at keeping track of all the ways to talk to
people in between the towns of Appalachia .
This
book is a city skyline bristling with bridges.
This
book is a bridge tagged with blue.
This
book is the furl of tarpaulin beneath the bridge, a rectangle of chill in
January.
This
book is a labyrinth, a web of careful bricks edged with stiff tufts of leftover
grass.
This
book is an empty suit of armor on display in a place where no one knows its
story.
This
book is a carpenter’s cat’s paw with nothing to nudge loose from beams or
siding.
This
book is the slender bleachy jawbone of a fox or dog, found settling into tar on the
traintracks near Talking Rock Creek.
This
book is a mug of jasmine tea, remembering how sweet it was to be a flower.
This
book is the place where poems go to be alone when no one wants to read them.
This
book is a monocle, always hot from starting tiny fires in checkout lines.
This
book is the big old wind that tears down limbs from oak trees and sings to
itself in the cove.
This
book is cousin to the Eastern Forest Field Guide under the seat in the truck.
This
book is a superhero’s diary, full of hyperbole and mischief.
This
book is the unwritten thing that has no synonym, no nomenclature to show itself
to others. It sings its little song of consolation. It whistles past the
graveyard in the moonlight. It is a cliché, a cannonball, a memorized stanza
from high school, an excuse, an homage, a playground, and a whisper. It got
lost once but found its way back with nothing missing. You looked and looked,
expecting to see a chunk of font cut away from the middle with someone’s tiny
scissors, but everything was there, all the words that courted you and made you
write them down for some unspoken reason you aren’t sure exists.
This
book is all topography, all raised edges showing you what to see and how to get
around it.
This
book knows your name but won’t say it.
This book is the last story you’ll ever need: a simpleness, a foundling,
a caress, a stumble, a woodsplitter, a pillow, a koan, a dream half-remembered
in the morning, a plate of scrambled eggs with lots of pepper, an afterthought,
a raincoat, a weathervane, a kiss.-----©Laura Sorrells 2013
all rights reserved
Your writing. You feel it in your soul...don't you?....Not your words...not the things you say.......but THAT.......yes, that ONE....the connection.....the golden thread that is beyond words...just an intuition, kind of, like a friend, or that wood burning stove you mention.
ReplyDeleteYou sound well, friend.
Love,
RC
Beautiful. Simply beautiful.
ReplyDeleteRobert---yes, yes. Thank you both.
ReplyDeleteThis whole piece is beautiful. I most relate to the part about the people between the towns of Appalachia. I lived there for a few years. Relating to them does take a special sensitivity.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I suppose so, deepr. that just came along, that line.
ReplyDeleteit's experience and all that is the shadow of experience, the truth that resides just on the other side of our time.
ReplyDeletethis is stunning, laura.))
xo
erin
Thank you, Erin. I so appreciate that.
ReplyDelete