Tidal Basin


Germination Detail Part III, by Leslie Shellow

contemplations about what stays in the net

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

I's

What happens when I's blur
        and then dim?
The clarity of the world shifts and
moves towards the heart

Inside

a deep longing to be lost
in the absence of lines and sharp details.
      I soften and the world disappears
the darkness now a haven for designs
I've never seen.
                Wake up! you say
                 Can't you see?
I's see alright
    in the dim light --
    a night 
to you
         not me

"Red Hills and Bones"

                                                                "Red Hills and Bones"
                                                                Georgia O'Keefe, 1941
                                                                                The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949


It's soft here on this desert floor--
the first time I've felt soft
in my life.
       Maybe it's the non-doing
because I was undone
      and reduced to my elements
I gave a terminal sigh which was
                   caught in thin, dry air
                            and breezed downwind
                        carrying dust particles as my
                                        memory.

             I lay here,
             just bones,
             and I don't have to
            do. Anything.
The chase is over.
     I don't even remember
     resisting.
  Was I taken down
   quickly?
Or did I die throughout the night,
painting the sand auburn
  inch      by       inch,
the pool of my life spreading beyond
             my form?