“I write my life.” ~ D. Bonta
Drink quickly, we’re told. Live
immediately, before the stream
changes course, before the water
makes good on the threats
it is always making about our utter
effacement, our certain oblivion.
So what if it does? Don’t linger
in the bath that certain evenings
draw you into: all melancholy, all
purple shade and stupefying incense.
Rain or no rain, tomorrow the sky
is the ledger on which the sun
once more pawns its only diadem.
Who is without debt? Who is without
a raft or gondola of burdens?
In the crepuscular mist it’s easy
to be entranced by the long,
trailing banners of sadness,
by the fixed and illusory orbit
of their ferment. You want to know
the word with which to dispel them,
what bitten seeds to disgorge
from under the tongue. Perhaps
winter is merely winter and not
ransom of one body for another.
Perhaps the fig and the plum
burst out of their skins only
because heat has unstitched them,
and not because their hearts constrict
from a sadness they cannot bear.
In response to Via Negativa: Contingency.