And now I want to read some of the new poems
that I've written since I've been here.
And this continues with the same character.
So this is from section 5.
This is called "An Argument."
Given the if.
The open palm.
A question interposing in the air.
Given a voice that answers from the corner of the room,
a kitchen table where they sit and speak.
A hole gapes in the interstice.
Blue air through the curtain slab of sunlight
sliding along the windowsill between what they have said,
and what they mean.
Call this an argument.
As one might say negotiate and the other might hear choose.
She might place a cup on the table
or take it from the table to the sink.
She thinks it is a cup, but one might call it
tea cup, coffee cup, or mug.
As the rustling outside might be the willow's branches
or the passage of a person through the street.
She thinks when she says sky, the idea of a sky is evident.
Like the theory of a roof that says, beneath a given roof
there is a room, a kitchen with a table,
two people with their separate names,
their breakfast dishes waiting in the sink.
Rain, rain, rain, rain.
She thinks if there is rain, it's
falling must denote the seconds as they pass.
That the ticking of the rain is equal to the moments
that accrue.
If the gutter fills with water it is a sign
that hours have gone by.
So time emits.
As the statement, rain is wet, turns in on itself.
But perhaps no time has passed and there is simply
this, a blotter and a desk, her window
open to the sound of rain.
She thinks when there was rain, that day was somehow green.
She thinks when the forest was green we knew it had been damp.
Either she must fill the time or memory emits the way
that memories emit.
She thinks there must have been some days both green and gray,
days of standing water, and days the rain streamed down
along the eve.
She thinks how can one bear a scene, but not
its recollection?
Say there is neither time, nor the fact of memory.
Or time, but not its slippage through the scene.
Or say all times are present, here and now at once.
Or say the rain is dry and therefore, time cannot emit.
Or say the falling rain emits a timeless time.
She says I am awake to mean this wilderness of thought,
to name the voice that tells her that argument was true.