don’t be suckered
watch more concretely
invest yourself
with true attention
(as though eating food)
(which in fact you are)
he is not just colorless
a bland aspect
of a landscape
blander still
see! — do not look
it is your soul
what’s the culprit
ever superceding sense data
with habitual corpses
of once less dead concepts
it is your soul
what’s the logjam
tallying too swift
for awake decision
whether some desire
always fleeting
(you confuse for effervescent)
is to be met
by glancing hither
any longer

first I waved
not too effusely
acknowlegments
and nodding heads
what swims I wondered
and he pulled a trout
as if to answer
as if to gift
three in his creel sac
he showed me after
eleven inches
and maybe twelve
beautiful things
with subtle color
the river feeds sweetly
this month he said
and told their secrets
I remember some
how they love colder waters
alive and vibrant, moving
and how before June
they’d certainly travel
down to deeper beds
and safer rivers
not before spawning
a thousand new ones
here in this nursery
that one percent perhaps
might grow mature
and we told names
and sketched brief backgrounds
but by our voice tones
were we truest known
minutae don’t matter
when doing sense yoga
or speaking together alone

I’ve different waterways
to tack and cognize
fish of a different sort
to learn and treasure
but yet we recognized
our kinship accurate
comrades verily
for both were seekers
wherein the true
gives birth the zeal
and how all non-vital
was filtered wisely
marked both our methods
to stalk what is
the way it’s kindness
which colors seeing
its rightest hues
and breeds hello
not reason’s incise
which cuts and dices
to craft its viewpoint
in measured cubits
while what it considers
dies a death

_______RS

[ Foto : moi, a stretch of Rivière à Simon ] 

Note: Could be friends with this guy a subsequent lifetime, sitting riverside for hours in intense conversation while taking care to utter no words. But he’ll likely then be an Oriental carpet salesman in Kazakhstan somewhere.

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