synchronicity
Some days after work I go to a movie and some days I get drinks with friends and some days I take the streetcar up to Powell’s, and today I did this last one, in the light that at six was already not light enough to call daytime, in a breeze that was already full enough with dry leaves to call fall. I was looking for a book of beat poetry for Beth who mentioned she’d been wanting to find one, but instead I ended up flipping through my same familiar heroes, hoping for used copies of titles I don’t yet have. It’s how I ration books when I want to have them all on my shelf: I wait until they are returned by someone else. This way a ten year old volume from a favorite author can still be new to me. A dead author can still be prolific. I can always feel the larder is full.I’m picky about my used books – they need to feel right in my hands, they need to be free of highlighting and yellow edges. Underlines are ok. Inscriptions are, too, though they make me sad. The font and the layout and the paper have to look real and intentional, and not like a poorly planned reprint. The book has to smell right.
I flipped with a certain resignation through Mary Oliver, excited for all her new work that will fill the next many years but sure there would be nothing for today. No one sells back Mary Oliver.
And then there was American Primitive, one single used copy in a row of nine new ones, one single copy without the fake seal on the front saying Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. I’ve owned this book twice at least but I have trouble holding on to Mary Oliver. She writes the kind of words you want to give away because you wish they were yours. Here are some now.
Fall Song
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
posted by tortaluga @ 9:12 AM
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