On fountains

Did you know that dandelions close up at night, she asks. When we’re at the worksite, early, real early like that, I noticed they’re closed, but then when we leave. 

They aren’t. 

Aren’t they exactly what you thought it would be. I miss you. Morning is night played in reverse so the sky is in the process of closing itself up and opening at the same time. My writing mimics the form. A cloud drifts in the sentence. 

The fountain organizes a space, giving direction to what ought to be faced. Trees have the opposite effect. They always encourage us to look away. To rest our backs on their soft-soft bark. And see something beyond itself with itself. I lean against the chair and watch the water circulate in the basin. The jets are gentle and spray with just enough force to guide the arial rivers into the shape of skinny downward arches. The energy of their return pushes the circuiting water towards the fountain’s orbital lips. See it in the ripples. See it in how the petals collect like a traffic of pink memories at oceans end. What are they building? 

The fountain sits underneath the shade of this great cherry blossom at the intersection of two roads and a block of buildings. A triangle. It is early enough that the sky is still tan but cool and doctors have begun their migration towards the hospital across the river. Watching this scene and its impossible presence fills the poet with a sense that she must write it down. Or translate the stamina of the moment into something longer, like a kiss. It's boring at this point to say that you cant, but thats why it's not a metaphor. Everything broke when a bird descended to the fountain and drank. These words are thirsty too. 

I remember you wore those headphones during our first in person event. The chewy turquoise made them look like candy and I thought it was funny you put food in your ears. Knowing it was your friend who gifted them confirmed something for me. The sense that even without knowing, I knew that there was depth to the object. Not that surface is never enough, sorry North Korea, but the gravity of a thing and its thinghood was no doubt perceived, if not for just a moment. I guess I'm just trying to say, I love your talking stick. I guess I'm just trying to say, I love you. 

The bird knows nothing of the poet’s fountain. They only see their thirst. Writing is the art of entering the bird’s mind so as to see the world for what it offers and not what the imagination has already named. Poetry willows underneath. 

Observation

Feeling 

Need 

Request 

The analysis of an emotional vocabulary 

Begins with the word guilt

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A headline reads: How Venice invented the world.