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the seductive picture of cities growing

      The course of exhaustion is evanescent but plotted with such precision that any artist could paint it. The last raindrops swell around the bud-point of every bough. There is nothing certain about the appearance of bodies in physical space. A slow cascade, nearly stilled. It isn’t a matter of if you wish to appear, but of whether you will, and for long. What scheduled pleasure doesn’t admit to some rain, in the forecast at least. Such are the pleasures of thought to the perfectly thoughtless. A flag snaps endlessly flat in the breeze. There’s time to get out in the world and to breathe, to liven the lungs, to raise the eyes, to visit the rambling park where teenagers brawl. As for me, I’m merely eroding by choice. Each decision guides me through the next, like choosing a path through the city by following continuous holiday lights. Sometimes they’re strung with disastrous economy. Whereas I’d gladly follow a bird if I could only get one to lead me as Robert Frost was led in his famous poem, “The Woodpile.” Possibly birds don’t behave in that way any longer. They seldom encounter ghosts, or so I believe. Perception will be salvation, one tells oneself, imagining one has been perceived. I take your disappearance as notice from the other world. Someone lifts an iron and rain begins. The sun grows repetitious like desire. The feeling is that of a marketplace. An ethereal mildew coats every mote in its confines. It’s said that the lowliest garbage is flush and sublime. And becoming family, and arresting the breaking wave. A pattern we hold beyond hope of modulation.
Picture
William Coffin. The Rain, 1889. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Andy Stallings lives in Western Massachusetts with Melissa Dickey and their children. His first two books, To the Heart of the World (2014) and Paradise (2018), each came out with Rescue Press. He teaches and coaches at Deerfield Academy. 
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