What is desire
As when listening to a story, children always want to knowthe next thing before sleep until they wake and the morning becomesancient, so too those beginning at love first ask, Is it real?—and thenWas it a memory?—only to stare at a vast middle growing, openingat their feet, the river of language. To be awakened to each word’sminnow-pulse, the salt-scent of humannoise, breath, texts, old letters—the rapids and eddies of stories,poems. The three words of a dead father’s fadedink kept folded in a wallet: , the dividedtrochees’ out-breath unending. The bird flying within each of uswhose wings are hands, the hands of words joining people,ages in a sentence growing toward its end, leadingtoward the next one in a brief waking like youth—the day and night of the page, whatkeeps us moving. What is desire if not to open as the river opensthe land, words the mind of light—what keeps onflickering in memory. The one who birthed me—long ago—hangingsheets on the line, her body white-draped, arms still reaching out, an eclosionholding the moment. Yes, or as Levinas says, “The excess over the presentis the life of the infinite.” The way she held so much lightthen carried it in her arms, moving through the field of timetoward the house. and not to bewithout like the nomad. The sheets still a bitdamp so they might continue to grow through that night, the sound of rainopening my sleep and into hers longer, whilejonquils and daffodils—in excelsis—burst through the green.
