By Edward Lees
While getting groceries I watch the cars stutter and move by – patches move in unison like birds that stop then flock without a leader. The cars are always there, but they differ day to day. I watch too a tree as the wind shifts its leaves, grouping them like the cars, while some bend another way. This precise configuration is a first for the tree and a last. My vantage point, the weathered light, add to the moment’s uniqueness. How it all changes. How it all arises: sounds, sights, thoughts, emotions, memories, dreams – like jockeying cabbies – each with their own energy. I hum equally with their passing, as my chest does from a loud truck on the road. Each sensation in a way as real as the other and, desirable or not, each as life-affirming. I take it all in. Even the evening moon becomes part of me as it appears in my mind. I manifest what I see. I remind myself to look more at open vistas, notice more beautiful things. I think that internal and external might be fictions – that others are somehow a part of me too, like Vance, who spun me around with a heavy punch to the head at age eight while I was waiting for the bus, shifting how I saw the world even then. And where am I now amidst this inhalation of change? I see myself in the passing window of a store, carrying my bags, but when I look closer I see only scattered strangers inside and the vacant spaces around them, like when I remember something shameful and don’t recognize myself, or try to recall something but come up empty. I start to think that the closer you look at anything, the more it evaporates. Even then though, awareness stays constant. Perhaps that is myself, like a vacant road waiting to be filled and travelled.
Edward Lees is an American who lives in London. During the day he works to help the environment and he writes poetry in the evenings if his daughters permit it. Connect on Twitter @lees_lines.
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