​…and I begin here, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a thought and already the pen is running out of ink. Fading words. . .  How Zen I think. And thinking how Zen I've become since coming back from out there, I write on till it runs out



…and I flew out there to be away from here: to be there



…and there I lived in a room and wrote about back here: about a house I did not want, a love I hated and a life that wasn't.



…and I tried to poem it in noble, epic symbols & tried to write it in my rented room, in the railroad split park, on the single mothers' beach, in the library



…and I tried too hard.



Don't she said. And she never said a word about it. There she was, in black shorts & flowered Hawaiian shirt boogieing down the ai¬sle, dusting books. Wars yesterday, children tales today, fine arts tomorrow she said. And she never said a word just collected dust jackets out of which she made collages.



Don't she said. And I knew that whatever she never said wasn't new but her dance down the aisle (a punk vision, honourguarded by shelved words was



…and of course I followed



…and walking into town her way, we convoluted, unsure of short cuts she was sure of. And she asked me about there and I spoke unfluently of the yes & of the no & of the house



…and she (a carpenter, a good apprentice she said) said that she constructed her life by improvising with what she had. And she led me back a different way: in the silence of uphill



and…



...and every morning I wrote about the senses being the sensa¬tion, about how the stretch stretches from here to here

...and here, amid the rubble, the present touches light



and. . .

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from From Here to Here
1980