. . .

For the first time in over a month,
it rains.

Afterwards,
the air stays stuffed with moisture.
Through the humid haze of a milk-white sky
I hear traffic crashing into puddles
on the streets below.
Watery explosions
like tire-slick promises.

Words get in the way of my inertia;
I have not wanted to write for days
and maybe weeks.
As if I am protecting something
that defies description.

And if possible,
I would slice the singular sameness-of-this-life in half
with one clean slash
that cuts it short.

To drift towards uncertainty,
past aimlessness
in my horizoned boat
with sails catching early morning isolation
in concentrated sounds.
Submerged within the sanctity
of clinks-and-bobs-and-laps
but washed within
by every wordless haiku-ed wave.
Pure motion seeking something sacred
in the notion of an unknown place.
Time stretched straight ahead
and perched atop a quivering compass needle.
Its thin blue line of clarity
holding fast to alloflife
contained within a single arrowed slice.
Its direction never blurred by destinations.

To be saturated
by utter newness,
by Genet's idea of presentiment
and by that first unsure step ashore.
As if swallowed whole
into the belly of unquestionable anonymity.
To become unknown and twisted inside-out
by exotically strange places,
by the bumpandpush of unfamiliar crowds
and by shoulders shoved against thick thread-thrilled smells.

I think of him from time to time,
while also knowing just how much
I have inextricably linked
these thoughts
to Durrell's writings.
How Durrell infuses relationships
with particular geographies
and other diagonals
that are also reminiscent of him.
And sinking into both at once
creates a funnel of inseparable drips
from all this syruped heat
that streams into a seamless pool
of refreshing hereandnowness.
Diving into disparate ideas
presoaked in vagueries
(which I have come to value).
Unthought-thoughts that (one day)
might condense and wind back into spools.


But my words are of no consequence
to this day,
this life,
him,
even as they have changed me
in wordless ways
that far surpass my comprehension.

Last night (perhaps in recourse),
I sought Borges-in-the-park.

He is always there,
a constant stretch
across the same black mesh-metal bench.
And although strangers,
our conversations grow slightly unreserved.
I always find him in that one soft spot,
there beside the rocks.
A predictable man who always faces the evening lake.
Looking for surfaces and oblivious to passing crowds.

Together, we watch two mallards preen.
I sketch the chiaroscuroed cracks.
Their shadowy inbetweens defining solid mass
while water soaks their edges with a shadowy prayer.
Although still daylight
in the endless blue of sky above,
night lies in wait within these crevices.
Much like the transitions in Borges'poems,
there is a grey tint of time becoming-timeless
in these inbetweens.

Borges sees all this.
He smiles and nods.
A conservative man contained within

"his modest and secret complexity".

From within each sideways glance,
I want to ask him what came between him and Neruda.
But I know the question will invoke a politic
that does not fit this moment.
Instead, I seek his silence,
his white spaces that frame black-lettered thoughts.
And beside my paper-pencilled replies,
I hear him say,

"I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away
he doesn't expect to arrive."

While the blue of the lake fades into shadowy swells,
the evening sun slinks lower.
Still-bright-blue-daylight in the sky above,
but all the walking shadows from each passerby
interupt the evening's golden light
as if to summon up the dark
from all my fading looks.

Before leaving,
Borges slowly leans closer
til our shoulders touch
and without lifting his eyes
from the distant stretch of water
softly whispers,

"Every single thing becomes a word."

I know that I will not find him in the words he writes.
Instead, he hides within the veiled secrets he invokes
by trespassing into my night sky.
As if to say
that one's direction
does not necessarily have to be obscured
by destinations.

"A man sets himself the task of portraying the world.
Over the years, he fills a given surface with images
of provinces and kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships,
islands, fish, rooms, instruments, heavenly bodies,
horses, and people. Shortly before he dies he
discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is
a drawing of his own face." (JL Borges, 1960)