#michael mcgriff

The velvet-dark […] by my side without reflections.

Denis Johnson...told us that we should keep two notebooks. In the first, he said, we were to write in the usual way—fretting, second-guessing, brooding. The second one, he said, was different because it was governed by a single rule—this notebook had to be a space where the pen never left the page, where we wrote everything down, no matter how bizarre or reckless it felt. The first notebook is your enemy, he told us, and the second is the only thing worth committing your lives to. I think of all the rough edges, impulsive leaps, obsessive engines, and quirky spillways of intellection that give my life its deepest meanings and pleasures. And what it all shares, of course, is born of that ‘second notebook.’

Soon, I will be the barn-dark space / between the trees.

I swim out in a trance on the glittering dark waters.

The bright shore hypnotizes the dark one.

November offers candies made of granite. Unpredictable!