print previewback CAROLYN GUINZIO
The Pines
One two.
There is a ligature,
The ant eats the nectar from the aphid
and there is begin again.
The man eats the nectar from the ant
We were in the car
with a fly.
To walk is to seek
When the fly first finds itself inside,
it is wild.
a pure form of being
And the signs have tails.
Move read as maze. And Eyes as yes.
To know what was thrown in the river
knows that the river is only the bed
And the movement of the car
in its nimbleness left a heavenly nimbus
To know the name of the flower
on everything. There are fields.
And the houses were there before the road.
To know the name of the bug
And we said how beautiful the houses would be
if they were where they couldn’t be seen.
~
A device.
First
We were both there when it happened. Or, I was there when you told me about it,
something
or you were listening to me tell you about it, and once one of us said it out loud
to the other, it became an idea. The soon-to-be beings that we called into being
had to happen
sat up from where they were resting on the backs of the ghosts standing on one leg
in the marshes. In those days, we went to the marshes to see beautiful things
to move us away
we had never seen before. We would stop unpacking the boxes (which meant we
were staying [together]) and walk out to the marshes where curlews and
cormorants watched us arrive with something that seemed like fear. The moment
from ourselves.
the evening breeze reached us from the hills where it came to exist, we went back
to our room and opened the huge window together to let them in.
~
Experience as sight.
If what happened to someone one day in the woods is an idea that matters to
We backed
everyone, out of fairness to the almost unearthly beauty of the pines, the sharp
ravines and clear waterfalls, the sharp and clear features of the sketch stapled to
away from
the trees at the edge of the woods, the spots on thrushes and oven birds blurring in
the stillness around them in the scrub when they are waiting to be sure it’s safe to
an idea
emerge from where they are hiding in what seems like fear— the ghosts pushed
and ended up
their way into the space.
in the pines.
~
An unexpected event.
And then it begins
Slip
to slow.
your
And then it begins
arm
to snow.
A slowing, a lowering. The fly flies less and lands again lower.
into
A shirt was hanging on a hook on the door.
the
Remember slipping your arm into a sleeve?
sleeve.
~
Refrigerator door.
Something is moving in the wall.
You’re
Something
It only matters if you are alone, and if it is otherwise silent.
going
is
The sounds of a house settling its weight onto the plot
to
is nothing. Something moving in the wall is probably nothing.
moving
Spaces are all smaller than you will remember them.
be
How many things did you recognize for what they were
at the time? The thing that matters more is always
through
coming from another direction. Because things look different
sorry
from this angle. Sound was coming through
the wall.
the wall. Yes, spending the night alone meant the senses
someday.
were tuned to the soon-to-be.
You’re going to be sorry someday. 
