Lines Always Wash

Lines always wash across the page.

Waiting as lines wash over the edge

Of the page, I can begin to write

Myself out of this problem, this

Impasse, this being stuck. Being stuck

Here on the edge of the split from.

Lines always wash, I can begin.

Only in the midst, in this dark mixt

Of the curve, the curve of my mind

on to my mind irresistible

return, but by such small degrees,

such diverse ramifications

Raushenberg so that one remains

Long unconscious of it toward

a former phrase of oneself for-

Ever dissipated. I had

Fled reality's ingenuous state,

But, perhaps,

The universe of mind, too,

Has its curve,

Of which,

If it exists,

We can know nothing.

Do I speak the words or do they speak me?

But the shape of lips

and an apple and a flower

pinned to a dress

were all I was permitted to

know and to take away."

-Czeslaw Milosz

petals