#spatial poetics

Built in 1993 and apparently not maintained since, an inconspicuous gazebo sits in Minneapolis’s Loring Park. Its metal bars catch leaves, trash, anything light enough to be carried by the wind. Rust shows where the dark green paint has chipped. The roof, also made of bars, provides neither shelter nor shade.

But it’s a nice place to sit on the first warm day of the year, as the shadows grow long and birdsong blends with the tolling of church bells.

Plaques stationed around the gazebo offer up scraps of T.S. Eliot. A poetic force field, an attempt to carve something out of space and time.

Pause, breathe, note the shadows. You are the music while the music lasts.

Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind.