Mark Strand: The Night, The Porch

Hello Poets,
if we can find sacred distance from our troubling minds, Mark Strand seems to be saying, doors open and what we seek vanishes as quickly as it appears.
So let the spring wind blow you about, as it has me the past few days.
Best,
Sam

The Night, The Porch

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing --
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.

by Mark Strand, from New Selected Poems, 2007