You lost the moment you found gold in the palm of your hand. You remember
where you were and why there and who with but you cannot get back
the looking that was then so clear and now so far away. Like any prospector
you were patient with your friend eager to show you a book by a poet to you
unfamiliar and which he could not find but he found another that had you at the title,
WHAT DO WE KNOW?--the way Jerry Maguire had the girl in that movie.
God how the words sing to you still and one thing you do know,
if there were a god, any god, it would be so easy to believe in the face
of this poet, the only one since Wallace you see eye to eye with, or so you
imagine, having lost the moment you found gold in the palm of your hand.
You've lost a lifetime, besides, overlooking the poets for the saints.
Still the gold's in the looking and a good prospector looks for gold
everywhere. That's what makes her such a find for a mind that notices.
On reading a single gold page you turn to your friend, Charles,
and overhear yourself whisper, I may never write again.
Read her your own self and see if she does not burn your brain with incense.
Prospecting for Gold: First Draft 030527
The first draft was written on the day of the discovery of Mary Oliver and may forever remain gibberish as you cannot seem to decode its fine rhythm of phrases, but a first draft, since you believed the piece so golden you hid the very words from view by transferring the language into code and now not even you can decipher the strands or make out the light they are supposed to deliver save the title: Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver.
So much for belief and just as well.
Is it not Gautama who's supposed to have said 2500 years ago,
Cling not, not even to not-clinging?
Did not Jesus teach those who were watchful,
The truth that sets you free and the truth that hurts
are one and the same?
Without the losing there could be no finding and no noticing
the very delight at the end of the palm of the hand.
The irretrievable first draft gives rise in its very mystery
to a new creation.
