little by little one thing wants

central park, new york city

I left my magnetic north on an evening of little by little one thing wants. I wrote many gold-handled lists, day waves and night waves of early waking and morning color, and my heart said 'ready.'


The thing I like about trains and subways is that I have the ability to do all the things I want to be doing when I'm driving my car ~ rummaging in my purse, applying chapstick, writing down that thing so I don't forget it, daydreaming, collecting words and writing snatches of poetry. I wrote the above sitting at the philadelphia train station this afternoon.


On last night's subway, wrapped in the warm underground air, I pulled out Pablo Neruda's Captain's Verses and read a few pages, and then was unexpectedy treated to an older gentleman across the aisle leaning towards me and reciting, in spanish, the first few lines of Neruda's twentieth poema di amor.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo, "La noche está estrellada

y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos."

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, "The night is shattered

and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance."

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