602 Yergens Road
Looking back often, in your direction
I want to be as quiet as the snow. I was speaking only
to myself but there was the sensation for a moment,
of falling. The snow was falling, I mean. Don’t
hesitate, you told me. I won’t stop doing something
beneficial for me, so I can’t make your decision for you. I
excavated each word to find its meaning. I
excavated its meaning and didn’t find anything. So
we took off our words and were left with our
bodies. When we tried to take off our bodies, there
was still something deeper we couldn’t get our
hands on. There was no perfect offering. No place in
you wide enough for the light to get in. So I had to
walk away, looking back often, in your direction,
where there was only silence left. Also the
night…and the faint trace of a stranger’s footprints
in the snow. Forget it.
__________
S. Kai Lin
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
This poem reminds me that somewhere a freeing and redemptive sentiment runs through the veins of all living things, carrying the power to grow and elevate the small and the singular into a murmuration, a flood, pulsing and swooping across the sky. The mother of all evenings is approaching; the end of the day is here: it might be time to pull ourselves together, to multiply in the multitude we have always been part of, to find each other on the common ground and shared path. If we want to surViVe the night, that is.