#carlphillips

poet blk! #nationalpoetrymonth

Carl Phillips is an American writer and poet. He is a Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis

From Carl Phillip’s “Loose Hinge” in Rock Harbor (2002)

"I've bloomed twice in this life already." | #poetry #poetryreading #read #carlphillips

            Somewhere between what it feels like, to be at one with the sea, and to understand the sea as mere context for the boat whose engine refuses finally to turn over: yeah, I know the place— stumbled into it myself, once; twice, almost.  All around and in between the two trees that grow there, tree of compassion and—much taller— tree of pity, its bark more bronze, the snow             settled as if an openness of any kind meant, as well, a woundedness that, by filling it, the snow might heal…You know what I think? I think if we’re lost, you should know exactly where, by now; I’ve watched you stare long and hard enough at the map already…I’m beginning to think I may never not be undecided, about all sorts of things: whether snow really does resemble the broken laughter             of the long-abandoned when what left comes back big-time; whether gratitude’s just a haunted space like any other.  This place sounds daily more like a theater of war, each time I listen to it— loss, surprise, victory, being only three of the countless fates, if you want to call them that, that we don’t so much live with, it seems, as live for now among.  If as close as we’re ever likely to get, you and I, is this—this close—

Carl Phillips