a couple more thots / by jack

notes thinking about finch

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To witness, to see, is to be a martyr.
It is to be devoted to what takes you apart
From yourself and thereby dismembers the see-er, the seer.
The sere seer.



To see something, to appreciate it truly
(“Absolute attentiveness is prayer”)
(Attention is love)
Is to let part of oneself pass out through the eyes
And attach itself, embed itself in the thing seen.
You lose yourself, a little, each time you look.
The sensation of splitting, here, can be painful.


Yet, behind all this -- behind even me -- the “me” that sees --
Behind my own disillusion and worry of the past, the
Future, which pretty much makes up my daily
Nerve-felt being -- behind all that, I dimly
Sense an “it” -- the it is free and cheerful,
See how it slips thru being and being
Comes and enters what is sunny by it --

There is a ceaseless addition and loss at the margin, the verge,
Which is finally, at its furthest snow-filtered flickering edges,
Wonderful and peaceful.


To see is to be a martyr.
But to see and write what you see
Is to let yourself go, and let it
Enter and open and see through your eyes
Its own.

Poetry is devotion.




To see oneself as a drift, a trace, is never pretty.
The self that witnesses this is drifted, torn apart.

However, the scene of the drifting, the tracing,
Is itself beautiful, hopeful. This
Is the constant paradox.









Buddhism speaks of the necessity of stilling the mind,
Meditating, allowing silence, as a way of gaining and
Entering peace and calm.

It appears that desire causes pain and anxiety, because
Desire connotes separation from what one needs.

What, then, is language, but an expression of
Desire for the world.

The price the poet pays for any insight which
He or she has, is to drift in anxiety, depression.
The choice is between being and knowing. By choosing
To drift in words, to think, to know, the poet resigns
Herself to the fact that she becomes separated from
Pure being and she sees the fiction of all things,
Including herself.

The poet feels sadness, but may not believe in
Sadness. The process of poetry itself is
Hopefulness.