It’s easy to imagine her, her body shaped around her pain the way a tree grows around a field stone, bends to the givenness of the thing. But beyond that, what do we know? Was she young, old, fat, skinny, angry, resigned? We know only that the blood, the slow muddy endless river of it, stained everything, her touch, her breath, her gaze, until her life became a drama of evasion. Then one day he happened by on urgent business, coming from a showdown heading to a showdown, betw

It is not clear whether we are rushing toward or waiting for some bright beginning, but everything in us bends to it with an ache deep as pleasure but dark. Whenever I break something say bread or a bone or the bark from split fir I think about this this day when all things are made new, rejoined, re-membered and the end bends clear around to the beginning and everything is as it is clear Mark Buchanan Nov. 2, 2007 #clear #poem