Dart

by Alice Oswald

Trees like that, when they fall the whole place feels different, different air, different creatures entering the gap.

They say all rivers were once fallen trees.

Oaks whose arms are whole trees

God how I wish I could bury death deep

breathe me please in whole inhale

if I shout out, if I shout in, I am only as wide as a word’s aperture

and the silence pouring into what’s left maybe eighty seconds

have you countervailed against decay? have you created for us a feeling of relative invulnerability?

I love this concept of drift, meaning driven, deposited by a current of air or water.

feeling inward for a certain sliding feeling that loosens the solidity of the earth, he makes himself a membrane through which everyone passes into elsewhere like a breath flutters its ghost across glass.

rememberer