Vol 1 No 2 2007
The First Time
… it’s
my duty to be attentive…
—Frank
O’Hara
So, so much world, that the internal must be vast to match it. Blank pages, which I love, & keep around, in fact two new notepads from Sally Wigon on Free Street, & the last three black pens to etch my hand like a primitive blowing ochre signatures on a cave wall. The blank page Godard calls the image of man. Out early again this morning, even though it’s the weekend, among dog-walkers & the homeless. No sunrise to speak of, but we did catch full moonrise last night just past eight before clouds engulfed it. The air fallish, but not really cool enough to justify the jacket I wore to the farmers’ market, where I saw Jim Beckwith, who saved his only three bunches of carrots for me; Lester with his variegated heads of lettuce; a nod to Ramona; & conversation with Cindy about the origin of gladiolus, also known as sword lily, in Africa, & the dahlia from Mexico. Back here to the sound of her voice up in the loft preparing to teach her yoga class, then opening a page at random to a poem read perhaps twenty times, as if for the first time.
Robert Gibbons