Last Day in Seattle / in these United States, the Sky that is the Ocean

A day before I leave the country. Finally. In Seattle on 15^th, the sun is out. In the wrong places, in the right ones. Cars moving quickly down the street, like they know exactly where they're going, where they've been. I believe them only maybe. The wind in the trees says "summer," and then it stops. For reasons that seem to happen at the end of seasons, and in cities one is leaving, I find myself in need of Oppen, very much so. This, at the moment, means I also need the internet. Victrolas, a coffee shop like almost every other coffee shop, is full of little noises. Klink  after klink of dishes in the sink, the grind of some machine that cuts the coffee into bits. And there are people here as well, a small cacophony of voices which swirl around the room, young and pretty people, better dressed than I am, and they are doing things, talking amongst themselves and/or staring at their computers. I too am staring at my computer, where Oppen is... 

Of This All Things

There are the feminine aspects,

The mode in which one lives

As tho the color of the air

Indoors

And not indoors

Only—. What distinction

I have is that I have lived

My adult life

With a beautiful woman, I have turned on the light

Sometimes, to see her

Sleeping—The girl who walked

Indian style—straight-toed—

With her blond hair

thru the forests

Of Oregon

Has changed the aspect

Of things, everything is pierced

By her presence tho we have wanted

Not comforts

But vision

Whatever terrors

May have made us

Companion

To the earth, whatever terrors—

I need his work because for him, the self is only almost singular, which feels true at times, more so than it’s not true. Distinction, it seems, and even solitude, is made possible by other people. In this poem in particular, I like very much that there is another person there, or at least the promise of a person, the memory of Oregon and of forests where the woman walks, or used to, and the space that opens up and closes between two people. Though I wish she wasn’t blonde. 

____________

In Victrolas, the voices that wrap around themselves are the voices of a city I doubt I'll soon come back to. We are walking in the wake of things, all of us together, all of us apart. When I take off tomorrow, I want to watch from the window of my plane the city of Seattle as she slowly and finally disappears. I want to see the ocean, and the sky as it becomes the ocean, adjacent shades of blue becoming singular, becoming nothing. I am trying to remember, trying to forget. How long will it take before I am incapable of seeing anything but clouds? The plane will feel like every plane. I'll close my eyes. My friends will be with me. And there, for a long long time, sleeping.