There are stories about people who, at the edge of some extremity, somehow find the audacity to hail the future— I don't mean that the hero turns around at precisely the moment the firing squad releases a volley of shots just to say Hey or There will be more books written about me than there will be of you. I mean, is the future a straight line that intersects with the horizon or does it know there are interesting little towns along the way, where in a thrift shop one might find the kind of old-fashioned alcohol stove where a folded note might be hidden after the ashes of the fire have cooled? I mean a poem, certainly, could be a kind of letter to the future. But I mean I don't always know what to say or if I should say anything from inside what feels like a woefully banal moment. And should that even be delivered into the time we hope will survive us, our bad habits of procrastination, our love for sugar, our petty materialisms? But I'm a sucker for fountain pens and inks with names like Armada or Piloncitos; so when I read All the stars in the sky will be dissolved and the heavens rolled up like a scroll; all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shriveled figs from the tree, I can see the gleaming wash of water over paper: how streams of color find their way, how the tip of a brush fills in outlines of shapes that look as though they've always been there. How some moments are really envelopes, holding the very message you need and that you find when it finds you.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.