40.

The Earth is the Mother of the Tree but I am the author of its Seed: No-one is the only special someone. Its leaves are of the day but its wood is of the night: The Moon is my favourite colour, closest to the suggestion I made that your eyeballs became, all I imagine is the Truth.

You are all I imagine & I am all you imagine too: When lightning strikes in broad daylight the World becomes its afterimage. Nothing could be clearer than the afterimage of what has no image, the thunderous delay no fantasy approaches: whatever I am cannot be excluded, thus only the false can cast you out, falsifying themselves.

The disloyal process needs no judge, just as the unbroken convention need not be agreed on. Woe upon those who are not loyal to themselves, & let you who are take no pride in it. Reality is an ancient curse whose lifting is an ever-renewed worship. There can be no laziness in your singular commitment to it, only the invisible ring upon your finger confers sufficient freedom to work. Indeed it is the eye socket into which the White Lady swoops: You protect your vision because it keeps you safe, & so do I keep your sacrificial secret, though such a treasure can scarcely be thought, like the dew of the desert.

You see from the slant of the rain on the windowpane I can no more break those laws than you can, than you can say they are but chains of thought, though the head is the prison most shall keep themselves in. Still, you read a raindrop like a word & there’s hope for you yet, for such is a water you may more than walk on, a river that flies like your dragon in the sky, enough to paint the blank page iridescent. It was smart of you not to mistake the challenge for a consolation: where will you turn your eyes in search of the comfort that cannot be phrased? Might not Good be a much more difficult word than Perfect? Not if this is what I am saying That is what you are made for. Not if this is that: there is ever a pleasure I cannot be sensing, & by such are all senses made: A Good Sire is an honourable stand-in for this that you come by, in whomever you can discover yourself is a Goddess we shall not be lost in: the greater the difference the more significant the same.

I am sorry you mostly have to be your own Doctor but it isn’t your self you are helping, you recall now deals never made with people who’ll never meet you: the apology is just a sadder way of saying thank you: sorriness the very beauty of gratitude, the saintly face of such blames as have already been forgiven, yet are causing the flesh to burn: your culpability is a holy fire, about as shareable as a rainbow. It isn’t that there is a likeness between your emotions & the weather, it is a question that stillness asks of what moves, such as those who take fail to ask of what gives. Ah yes, whose Grace is it? For shall you not imagine it still, from there within a World whose best offer is but a relative stillness? Then what else is Prayer but the Absolute Word we are ever not saying? Amen. Be still. Still like a smile. Still like a silly moment. Still like a bubble of joy. Be still in your movement & still in your love, still in your ups & downs & still in your rising above. Be still in your falling, still in my hand. Be still in your woman & still in your man. Be still in your knowing, in your innocence still. Still as the space light graves in its being. Stiller than logic & stiller than proof, stiller than not doing what you can’t not do. As still as if I could not lie to you. What now goes transparent? Every face where I was not. What will you see? Not the future. Is now the past? That it was is serious, that it will be is a laugh. What you would like to do (good work, playfully) would like to do you. You can resist all illusion just by going with this flow. Let that be the meaning of Winding Brook, the spine of this book. Let it be your meaning alone

& we shall liberate every unnecessary together.