Would

All text & images © 2022 James Sperring Holloway

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(Fig. 1. A sudden account)




















 Fig. 1  “A sudden account”


What I want to say can wait. Watch out. These are not my things.

Seeds of ash. Single-winged. You know they could be a poem. Each one.

Each one. As I slip the handful in my pocket. A sudden account.

You don't need the details. Here we go. The war is heard from far away.

Fraxinus excelsior. My pocket is singing. Long walk back from the woods.

Everything is moving. We know very little. Everything waits.


* * *


(Fig. 2. And other dimensions)




















 Fig. 2  “And other dimensions”


There is the way of “I” and the way of “not-I”, and then there is
the other way, which is neither I nor not-I, which is a walk.

Which is a field corner. And other dimensions. And mud making
room for sky. For what’s seen here is really an old, old love poem.
Insects inscribe it. Trees recite it. Winds forget it, mostly. Then rain
explains everything, and stops.

There is the way. Let the world have its moments to itself.

(Pausing on the path then, pausing now, still in love.)


* * *


(Fig. 3. Quietly)



















 Fig. 3  “Quietly”


Even further back, far beneath
the feel of the paper, behind our
secret eyes, beyond this fast mind
that breaks the surface of things
in a fraction of a second.

These sensory spaces happen not
to have been arranged for the
comprehension of any creature.

Then syntacticians like you and
me, passing by, taking a look,
seeking a story in the openings,
recreating ourselves with quick
sensations and slower questions.

Quietly.

Hard-pressed, sense-condensed,
gravity-strickened, sea-grained,
long-lost, mind-swept, inked-in.

We’ve always been an old story
about the untold gaps.              Near Covehithe, Suffolk, England. August 2021.


* * *


(Fig. 3. Not tree)




















 Fig. 4  “Not tree”


One old day
A mood said
Let me be.

The tree did.


(Not tree, not experience, not language, not imagination, not a story about
any of that. Nothing else will do.)


* * *


(Fig. 3. I heard something)




















 Fig. 5  “I heard something”


On The South Downs Way


Indentation notation.

Every small puddle incites the planet’s synaesthesia.

Pause to land softly on the surface of this arrangement.

Wind-blown harmonic structure, now recording, delicately sheep-scented (didn't need to sniff it).

Interval.

Seriously – I thought I heard something.

Some sheep watched me take a photo.


* * *


(Fig. 3. Not tree)













 Fig. 6  “in-between”


Front-door-step


The showing of things without
Is the sight of things within

Mind makes no further comment
When the thing is in-between

Thinging into a moment
Almost now and nearly then


* * *