Alive On All Channels: Humility is Endless:

What the living do -by Marie Howe.
Johnny..
the open living room windows because the heat's on too
high in here, and I can't turn it off. Didion with a cold in the hotel room when first arrived in NY (Goodbye to All That) ~ the AC was on and it didn't occur to me to call & ask that someone turn it off ~ was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that I was.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries Louise Gluck: All day I have been looking at this elm
in the street, the bag breaking,
I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And and I have understood (it waill make no forms but twisted ones)
yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my
coffee down my wrist and sleeve,
I thought it again, and again later, when buying a
hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What
you called that yearning. Hass: Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come
and the winter to pass. We want no. winter to stay.
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss -- we want not call.
more and more and then more of it. less and less and still always already too much.
but there are moments, walking, when I catch a But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread, the thing her father said that hurt her, what she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm
gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned
coat that I'm speechless:

I am living, I remember you.

ok. ok. it's too obvious, like a thing written myself and it's too obvious too familiar without being also new, too rhythmically like everything else and too much with the details, the every day, the video store and the coffee spill too too. but I know what it means. I am living I remember you. (this is what is in my mind: I am sorry. ) We want __ . and I think that, that is what I used to think 'all the time': this is what the living do. this? is what the living do? and I recognize the cherishing ~ in the mirror in the room in Kythera ~ when apart from the within, see yourself from without and feel moved


...johnny I am telling you, this can be our own love, if the weather is what happens

I am trying to tell you, I understand,
It’s okay. I couldn’t keep them
Out of the sunlight, and not touching
One another. Who’s to be sorry?

It’s okay I couldn’t keep them.
I keep telling myself this, can we tell
One another? Who’s to be sorry
If the weather is what happens?

I keep telling myself this can, we tell
Anyone we see, this can be our own love.
If the weather is what happens
There will be movement for you and I.

Anyone we see, this can be our own love.
I am trying to tell you, I understand.
There will be movement for you and I
When out of the sunlight and not touching.

.....

auden: my johnny and I. - - down by the river! I lost my baby!

johnny, there's something I have to tell you: _______
[you're adopted.] [ ___]

who's johnny she said, and smiled in her special way.
johnny she said you know I love you

.....

footer of Alive On All Channels: Don't set sail!/Tomorrow the wind will have dropped;/And then you can go,/And I won't trouble about you. -from "The History of Love" Nicole Krauss