happenstanzas & heliotrope

listen: my beach, human highway
location: on the way to duncan's cove



august 11, 1958
an old fash. library
on corner the red brick building curving around
- compassion for readers glimpsed inside - much
wandering - only remembered warmth
people interested in all kinds of malted milk drinks
sketched in pencil on yellow paper
-from 'joseph cornell's dreams'

we sit in a knock-kneed circle, pulling at the roots, looking through lenses that hang on ribbons & ropes at our necks. (they are pendants; we are pendent.) "is this an umbel?" you ask. "certainly," i answer, "but it's also a compound inflorence." we aren't graded for knowing the species of something, only for knowing what it is that things seem. so we sit on the reindeer moss, describing how everything curls round our feet.

i've befriended a very sweet girl named fia who has just arrived from sweden & points at the aspens, mumbling in latin & asking for english words. also, a trio of over-caffeinated urban planners. we talk about daylighting streams & houses built of straw. we climb houses (scraped elbows) & trees (scraped legs), sharing squares of chocolate at lunchtime & eating our way through a series of intricate sandwiches.

there are clouds cast overhead & a translucent, daylit moon. i cut larch branches with fia's knife from lapland and almost tread on a hundred-year-old arctic blueberry. a painted boat hovers against the saltwater, wooden steps leading from a grey cabin to the dock. ocean. this place is everpresent, windswept, & i think that everything here feels tovian. we are at summer's end, we are worn down & lanceolate with time. & autumn is beginning hopeful. there are always handfuls, yet.