As If We're Bodies

Giving welcome. At night, the river is perceived differently than in the day. Yet why do we begin by alluding to a landscape at all? As once we insisted on including in every poem a description of the weather. . . It's as if we're bodies, animals working their way from one end of a life to another. From one body to another? Well, movement anyway. Meditation is challenging precisely because stillness prefers not to be looked at (what's looking is what's looked at). One risks foolishness, always. At night, out back near the horses, the stars appear intelligent and kind, and the moon sifts through faint clouds like a lover who has come a long way to lie beside you. One night only. I'm lonely in a way but in another way I'm not. Margaret Livingstone said of the Mona Lisa, "she smiles until you look at her mouth, and then it fades, like a dim star that disappears when you look directly at it."