What if memory was the sometimes sudden rush into the present-

or that suspended moment lingering in blue and black and green that resembles tree, leaf, ground, sky-

or a web, a lace, a bramble perhaps in exile, perching, pausing, waiting to fly—

just everything all there ready to let go, to soar?

from Philip Larkin’s Letters to Monica:

The poetic impulse is distinct from ideas about things or feelings, though it may use these.

It’s more like a desire to separate

a piece of one’s experience and set it up on its own,

an isolated object never to trouble you again,

at least not for a bit.

In the absence of this impulse nothing stirs.

What if we stood so close to decay that we heard its emptying as a string quartet commanding us to trust its rhythm—

or we saw its unraveling as a swirl of fine threads arching toward a flying carpet—

if the vastness of an unstoppable furling was like a complete universe opening up inside of us?

What if we stood in front of a remarkable, undeterred mind and looked directly at its intensity—

even when it suddenly splashed and surprised us-

could we perceive that mind not so much as something to step back from but rather-

as a marvelous tempest and we remain in place, waiting in awe?