WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.020 align:middle line:90%
"The Shadow."

00:00:01.020 --> 00:00:03.620 align:middle line:90%


00:00:03.620 --> 00:00:08.900 align:middle line:84%
That morning sitting
quietly I knew for a moment

00:00:08.900 --> 00:00:15.200 align:middle line:84%
the unlocked transom of the
body, how the rib staves bridge

00:00:15.200 --> 00:00:20.090 align:middle line:84%
a sheer lake the same
within them as without, how

00:00:20.090 --> 00:00:25.460 align:middle line:84%
the wrist bones spill the
sky's austere unwavering, when

00:00:25.460 --> 00:00:28.310 align:middle line:84%
the crickets have
been still for hours

00:00:28.310 --> 00:00:33.440 align:middle line:84%
and the wrens' low whistles and
rasp-tongued blue jays have not

00:00:33.440 --> 00:00:35.840 align:middle line:90%
yet begun.

00:00:35.840 --> 00:00:41.480 align:middle line:84%
Across the continent it was
full light, and a man I loved

00:00:41.480 --> 00:00:48.180 align:middle line:84%
was tending the body of his
mother, not the one already ash

00:00:48.180 --> 00:00:52.110 align:middle line:84%
but one of paper
slipped into drawers,

00:00:52.110 --> 00:00:56.250 align:middle line:90%
packed into trunks left behind.

00:00:56.250 --> 00:01:00.570 align:middle line:84%
His fingers were turning
the smoothed flat pages.

00:01:00.570 --> 00:01:03.360 align:middle line:84%
The middle's ink
dark thicket to be

00:01:03.360 --> 00:01:07.410 align:middle line:84%
passed through as the black
scribblings of birth ink

00:01:07.410 --> 00:01:11.010 align:middle line:84%
and death ink must
be passed through,

00:01:11.010 --> 00:01:15.240 align:middle line:84%
and the edge is white because
the body has its limits.

00:01:15.240 --> 00:01:20.070 align:middle line:84%
There are things unspoken
between mothers and sons.

00:01:20.070 --> 00:01:24.420 align:middle line:84%
And when he tried to tell
me later what it was like,

00:01:24.420 --> 00:01:30.920 align:middle line:84%
there were silences too
between us and within us.

00:01:30.920 --> 00:01:35.150 align:middle line:84%
Listen, he said then,
and I did while he

00:01:35.150 --> 00:01:40.370 align:middle line:84%
held the receiver's open
mouthpiece toward the East.

00:01:40.370 --> 00:01:42.530 align:middle line:90%
In each of our bodies, the

00:01:42.530 --> 00:01:49.060 align:middle line:84%
sea swung close, then farther
off on its watery stem.

00:01:49.060 --> 00:01:53.320 align:middle line:84%
By then, it was night
again for us both,

00:01:53.320 --> 00:01:58.300 align:middle line:84%
another day paid
out in bolted cloth.

00:01:58.300 --> 00:02:02.500 align:middle line:84%
Memory, she'd once
written, is like the shadow

00:02:02.500 --> 00:02:09.100 align:middle line:84%
of a building, longest just
when it turns to disappear.

00:02:09.100 --> 00:02:12.610 align:middle line:84%
Still we stayed on
the open phone line

00:02:12.610 --> 00:02:16.840 align:middle line:84%
hearing the beating,
breaking, scoured out

00:02:16.840 --> 00:02:21.190 align:middle line:84%
chimes of wave scrub,
diamond and black the space

00:02:21.190 --> 00:02:24.820 align:middle line:90%
between them, empty, vast.

00:02:24.820 --> 00:02:32.500 align:middle line:84%
I could almost see it for a long
silent time, remembering her.

00:02:32.500 --> 00:02:33.000 align:middle line:90%