The shrubs resembled pale companions, & evening a long grey wall—
clouds dragging the ball of sun behind them on a thread I could pull back.
How pretty.
For the first quarter hour after, there was no more to say about it, the shore—vivid
& still as death—waiting as if water could bring some better images adrift.
Many evenings, it feels that the furniture begins to laugh in a dreamer’s staccato,
telling me that this is like yesterday, meaning you’ve been here before.
The clock chimes, struggling through the steps as it always does.
I know fear. I know how to write about demons, drive a stake into
their hawk-brown hearts, to eat the box of poems stashed inside the house.
In the last red intervals of the day, I become faithful. I think I know the meaning
of that word. How light bends deliberately through a glass.
I regret that I was
a body. In the hollow of roots, I am
the hanging thing.
There must’ve been a moment when I knew to put away the face of a child, &
draw from my pockets the pennies to put in my eyes.
Only then did I realize I still had to supply them.
—Douglas Luman
Douglas Luman is Production Director of Container, Art Director at Stillhouse Press, Head Researcher at appliedpoetics.org, a book designer, and digital human. His first book, The F Text, will be available from Inside the Castle fall 2017.
–Art: “Home, Forest, Cosmos” Photo by Bob Fisher
Bob Fisher says: “I live the Adirondack mountains of northern New York state. My home is virtually free of light pollution which is essential for astrophotography, which I have practicing for many years. I took this photo based Bachelard’s concept of House and Universe. On page 208 Bachelard writes ” Space, vast space, is the friend of being.” I hope this photo captures that spirit.”
Copyright 2017, Douglas Luman. Copyright 2017, Bob Fisher