I walked the field in tatterdemalion grace, my coat the color of forgotten things, and found the evening making its erasure of all the day had written on the hills. The world becomes a farrago when the light withdraws its hand from naming what we see. Tree and stone commingle in the dusk, and even I grow mixed with what I'm not. I think the earth's a palimpsest of snow where February overwrites November, and spring will scrawl its green imperative on every page that winter thought was final. But look how memory applies its cire to certain hours and makes them permanent, a gloss that holds the texture of a voice, the way your laughter caught upon the air. I am lachrymose but not from grief alone. These tears are what the waking vision costs, the price of seeing how each moment fades and simultaneously refuses death. The stars emerge like words we've half forgotten, their light a language older than our need, and I am walking home through broken syntax, through all the sentences the cold undoes. Yet still I gather syllables like kindling. I make my small fire from the scattered verbs. The world's a farrago, but I will name it. The world's a wound, but I will speak it whole.
Written for the Save the Word Sunday — Week 15 from JC.