40
Three or four drops per minute, the gutter assigns a steep crescendo
to the slow, picking wind. Birds give way toward midnight,
daybreak, dusk, a gathered loop indistinguishable from a low cloud,
a harbinger, a loom–sand-drawn footsteps knotted in something
that might resemble a pattern to the right eyes. Above all, cold, and
the damp of hanging perspiration, and an uncertainty of line or
measure, an understanding need to sort, precise notation, and her
strong, burnt fingers on the machine, a pluck, a lever, something
hums free.
Opening the book, looking for a Detour to share tonight, this is the one that struck me. Maybe the thought of wind after a stolen hour in the garden after work (just one chore, I’ll just plant the daffodils my mother gave me at the weekend, but then a clump of weeds catches my eye, and then a flowering currant, half winter-killed, in need of pruning). Maybe it was a day of notations and reports and then promise that something–still precise, still levered–might hum free. Or maybe just a sidestep, steps, more Detours.