I Catch Sight Of The Now

Jorie Graham

unforgettable though then hardly noticed green tiled ledge just up to my right in the glistening shower stall, slightly above my open eyes, square window in it, & slender citrine lip onto which I place, gently, this first handful of hair—always I see it—the window- pane up there letting anything in and out that wishes to pass thru—so freely—drops from the steam of the shower on it, the slipping of forever & for- ever all down the pane, where, beyond the still-wet clump, all seems to shine and murmur it’s just day, just this day, another day, filled with the only of this minute, this split minute, in which if I reach now I can feel the years, the fissure in them, these fractions here inside the instant—oh mine—how mine—moving now so differently, as if entering a room with frozen fingers and they say no you cannot warm them here at the fire, there is no fire, there is no room, actually there is nothing, though you can start carving the nothing, you can test your strength against the nothing, the subject is loss, the dark is inside your open mouth not knowing what else there is again to say, a kind of howling without sorrow, no amazement, no wisdom, just the roomlessness of this your suddenly— suddenly everything, suddenly there is no more of what there was, suddenly you do not die of fear you just fear, suddenly there is no such thing as right or wrong yr hand is a claw full of hair there is no purification anywhere as the shower keeps streaming looking for hollows, more hollows, this thread of the only water cycle dragged down into here to run all over you, to rake yr skinny neck & down inside of you where you look up, open yr mouth—to scream to sing to say the one right word—as now the next soft handful comes, it is such a surprise, as you raise up yr hand, high, full, to the ledge, to pile it on there—& what will you do now, shooting your gaze into those filaments, your years of having & not knowing, still wet, in clumps, through which the daylight now is pouring itself, though it is not pouring anything at all or into anything at all because it’s just the planet turning again and again into and out of the dark which is not itself actually dark at all.