from Report from the Hall Society, Vol. 1 No. 1
for Phil Hall
again
sight loses its grip. and
touch. and hearing. this sometimes happens many
times a day and you reach blind
invisible into the one kit you keep with you, into your worn
hellbox (invisible, deaf) and rig a stick-letter
catwalk into the haze. Edges. alphabotanical
fence rails for things to slide over and under. sign-
sounds in the murk. (yelp-echo. maybe a beast-blob
yelping back) and
reattach
part of a pupil. one
ear. one
four-fingered hand. memory scrap (hand
lifting a twenty-two).
theory:
being pulled toward a dark dense mass we call falling.
sunk. hid. the dead pull us past where the Earth’s surface
stops us. past where you sit reading and what you see
looking up from the page.
that other gravity. the friction of falling through that
atmosphere burns off hair, flesh, teeth, square
feet (most) of right now.
the speed
depends on perception. it happens in a flash, is
at a standstill. absorbed in eternity. only
yesterday before school you stood in a corner singing.
and
the people you love are gone one by one. the road
to the house you grew up in is
(what did you expect?) can landscape go missing?
people’s voices, their accents, their bits
of song. fading. fewer
and fewer visits.
how did you know this, Phil?
was it your father moving you all again suddenly
in the winter, another strange freezing
farmhouse
with nothing you owned?
the rush of thought passing in your ears. pang
of five lonely lines on a hollow page. I went across
the river. I lay down to sleep. when I woke up. Had
shackles on my feet.
thumb and three fingers find I’s stout
pillar, the snake-quick S.
there
is a ground. a path. an eye opens. books
on shelves. a window. the lake through pine boughs, an
eagle at the edge of the ice. a friend down the road.
coffee. your father telling you get the right
footwear for going outside
