Book: Picnic, Lightning
Quotes of Book: Picnic, Lightning
First, her tippet made of tulle,easily lifted off her shoulders and laidon the back of a wooden chair.And her bonnet,the bow undone with a light forward pull.Then the long white dress, a morecomplicated matter with mother-of-pearlbuttons down the back,so tiny and numerous that it takes foreverbefore my hands can part the fabric,like a swimmer's dividing water,and slip inside.You will want to knowthat she was standingby an open window in an upstairs bedroom,motionless, a little wide-eyed,looking out at the orchard below,the white dress puddled at her feeton the wide-board, hardwood floor.The complexity of women's undergarmentsin nineteenth-century Americais not to be waved off,and I proceeded like a polar explorerthrough clips, clasps, and moorings,catches, straps, and whalebone stays,sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.Later, I wrote in a notebookit was like riding a swan into the night,but, of course, I cannot tell you everything-the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,how her hair tumbled free of its pins,how there were sudden dasheswhenever we spoke.What I can tell you isit was terribly quiet in Amherstthat Sabbath afternoon,nothing but a carriage passing the house,a fly buzzing in a windowpane.So I could plainly hear her inhalewhen I undid the very tophook-and-eye fastener of her corsetand I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,the way some readers sigh when they realizethat Hope has feathers,that Reason is a plank,that Life is a loaded gunthat looks right at you with a yellow eye. book-quotepoetryIt is possible to be struck by a meteoror a single-engine planewhile reading in a chair at home.Safes drop from rooftopsand flatten the odd pedestrianmostly within the panels of the comics,but still, we know it is possible,as well as the flash of summer lightning,the thermos toppling over,spilling out on the grass.And we know the messagecan be delivered from within.The heart, no valentine,decides to quit after lunch,the power shut off like a switch,or a tiny dark ship is unmooredinto the flow of the body's rivers,the brain a monastery,defenseless on the shore.This is what I think aboutwhen I shovel compostinto a wheelbarrow,and when I fill the long flower boxes,then press into rowsthe limp roots of red impatiens-the instant hand of Deathalways ready to burst forthfrom the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.Then the soil is full of marvels,bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,red-brown pine needles, a beetle quickto burrow back under the loam.Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,the clouds a brighter white,and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edgeagainst a round stone,the small plants singingwith lifted faces, and the clickof the sundialas one hour sweeps into the next. book-quotelifelivingpoetryToday I pass the time readinga favorite haiku,saying the few words over and over.It feels like eatingthe same small, perfect grapeagain and again.I walk through the house reciting itand leave its letters fallingthrough the air of every room.I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.I say it in front of a painting of the sea.I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.I listen to myself saying it,then I say it without listening,then I hear it without saying it.And when the dog looks up at me,I kneel down on the floorand whisper it into each of his long white ears.It's the one about the one-tontemple bellwith the moth sleeping on its surface,and every time I say it, I feel the excruciatingpressure of the mothon the surface of the iron bell.When I say it at the window,the bell is the worldand I am the moth resting there.When I say it into the mirror,I am the heavy belland the moth is life with its papery wings.And later, when I say it to you in the dark,you are the bell,and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,and the moth has flownfrom its lineand moves like a hinge in the air above our bed. book-quote
