spide (apocope) not a spider nor that thought ‘not a spider’ given thirteen lines of Stevens’ poem ‘Bowl’—remaining ever a part, never a trick. The word ‘apocryphal’ arises, although—or maybe ‘in spite of’ or even ‘regardless of’ the fact— it had not been signalled. Indeed, what’s not necessary does occur: hot water displaces cold into the basin. This, in response to a poem that remains half-read: & that, when read, will have dedicated to it, ‘Bowl’, this poem, ‘spide’— together, with fruit. pager earlier in imitation of Shelley’s ‘white radiance’— promptly gainsaid. Or Baudelaire’s ‘les bas fonds’, done with, in that sense. Or, like an anagram of some thing transfigured—scratch that! Our very earnest sense of appreciation. Now I wonder what holds things together, a singular concern. Trees gather in massed proportion. Shaped in breath words are said, releasing intentions. So one can remain uncertain whose writing is to be acclaimed. Bloom’s ‘garden without images’, not granted to the care of others, endears the eye to itself. Seeing settles among a mesh of leaves on branches themselves entangled in thought—what is to be made of writing in our time, to elicit the unconscionable? Mere words used & re-used: a place you must go to in order to speak, describe, gather. illustrative poem somesuch commensur- ability of living. Brilliant. The rocks are made by the sea. But the sea is not made by rocks. Or trees crown the earth, or somesuch. The blue of the sea that waves crashes upon its own whiteness & on the rocks, which assume whiteness, as do I. Against anticipation, against measure, against the dust that settles on the car—no longer blue. Against againstness, as if commensurability were a kind of cure for blue. The air is blue, yet that which I breathe delivers me to the next one. I long to stop, that I might grasp to-and-fro’s wherefore. illustrative poem somesuch commensur- ability of living. Brilliant. The rocks are made by the sea. But the sea is not made by rocks. Or trees crown the earth, or somesuch. The blue of the sea that waves crashes upon its own whiteness & on the rocks, which assume whiteness, as do I. Against anticipation, against measure, against the dust that settles on the car—no longer blue. Against againstness, as if commensurability were a kind of cure for blue. The air is blue, yet that which I breathe delivers me to the next one. I long to stop, that I might grasp to-and-fro’s wherefore. circumstantial set each moment shakes itself, blessing designation. The nectarine exudes yellow, not fruitfulness itself. And green bamboo shoots daily extend centimetres: attests the control of major processes in biology. The station of activity plays out, elaborating terms— a cup ceaselessly spilling order into vocabulary: ‘In the East’ is a phrase we condone, savouring representation. ‘In the West’—a pattern established, that others might be led in a direction known. Poems are an effort made to draw the ungovernable, playful cats in that tree. These leaves are the sound against which, of all austerities, is made the sense of being one— rather much. Neither blocked nor a lens that’s mere conjecture against images discovered, though demonstrable enough. It’s like something slowed sufficiently to become visible—spray escaping the skier! On the table a roll of toilet paper unravelling near Lewis’s The Monk, escapes notice. vase bowl out walking I do not consider that the cloud consumes the moon or the moon the cloud or what happens to the spill of light (that settles in the bowl!)— nor is it clear to me which moves which or whether both are moved by something that (as it were) ‘spills’ each into the bowl of its own ends— —& now the moon reemerges, & the stars I notice are separate, though I see them & not the negative sky that separates their brightness... I came out thinking to frame a thought to ‘match’ a pink rose propped in the stone Japanese vase on the green table. The stem of the rose extends the vase upward—& the thought of stars, ear-white, is where it ends. The stars I know only in nightly bursts, the rose, the vase— never apart!