Part 23

I was gathering strangeness, like little stones. Tossing
them into a jar, waiting for the water to rise to the
top. A thirsty crow, negotiating with the universe. I

asked the differences to separate me, float me into the
far distance, as if my name, my being, my soul would
change, as if the past would no longer recognize me,

would stop calling my name. This is where the stones
were. On a beach in New Hampshire. Where the sea
was icy cold even as the sun blazed down on the sand.

In Boston, on a summer’s day. Still bright at quarter
to eight as if time had lost its way. Here the rhythms
were different. Light and life sparring for space. At the

bottom of Niagara Falls where all I saw and heard
was the white mist. As if there was a door to another
reality. Another way to compute impossibility. At a

covered bridge, painted red, somewhere in the
White mountains, over a hundred years old. As if it
held a precious secret. Below it, the river murmured,

saying something, saying nothing, the water so clear,
a world drifted in it, upside down, staring back at
me. I dropped a stone in it, green and flawlessly oval.