Rune
“I am not what you supposed but far different.”—Walt Whitman
Not timber or bronze or iridium, not the old habits of species at a waterhole or the short
irregular breaths of the last whispered guest
Not the grievance that gives way to truth or the truth of a three-headed beast in your atlas
of imaginary travels
Not the speaker with the plans but the quiet boy learning the rope trick in the hallway
outside the room
Not the intelligence noted for its acute air of judiciousness but the wasp’s sharp sting as it
strikes a shapely passing ankle
Not the coiled answer waiting for its question unlike what is asked or required on a
Sunday
Not the leaves in May shining ferocious in the garden where your grandson has left an
onion resting on a stone
Not the fierce attention of the man on the traffic island holding a sign that says something
smeared by the rain
Not the notice given by an eye to another in its hope of dependence on kindness or its
hope of notice in a room full of candles
Not the bored glance of a mother whose child has climbed higher than last time but is
busy with hurt and resentment
Not the author whose page is so busy with sound that he forgets each word’s landscape is
a story with beginning and end
Not your hand or my hand or the things that we touch in a day which includes so many
forms of heaviness, so much light
Not the tinge of memory in a place where someone else stood unaware of your life
or its constant necessity to record its existence in each room’s sharp corner
Not formal analysis or credo or code or the heard cries of pelicans over the water of the
bay’s dark shadow under the bridge
Not earth’s solitude early in the day when most everyone is sleeping and you are alone in
a kitchen where he or she once daily stood
Not the pouring of water or the boiling of kettles or the singing of neon as it advertises
books or massages or bereavement services
Not Augustine of Hippo or Herodotus or Longinus or Mrs. Miller or Captain Courageous
Not the oldest book or rarest coin or smallest bird known to sip water from a clover
Not your face in a mirror or a window nor your voice as heard on a recording among the
others nor your method of material witness to things as they open like a novel’s first
sentence
You are not in the room or the story or the thought you are not in the absence spoken as a
charm against itself
