Form Arc Form

When I say or write the word "form," I am acknowledging creation and confirming limitation. This confirmation is not an admission, but a confession. I am under no duress to say "form," or to say what I know when I say "form." I speak and write it freely. Some may view that as a weakness, and I agree that I am weak. I am weak as all natural things are weak when they turn from themselves to another and speak of themselves. In form, I am as perfectly incomplete as another who dispels form; in form, I am as weak in freedom as another who imagines themselves complete.

Whatever meaning poetry is capable of, it must be capable of rendering that meaning, and in form, as form is the trace by which a thing is known and has been known. When I say "God" I say "love" and I say "turn to love." If I say "emptiness" or "silence" I say everything that is God when I do not say "God." The trace is what you know of what it means to you to read these words. But I am no architect. I am not a scientist. I have little range to leave myself, to make a show of it, to erect stand-alone forms. I am seeking to enjoy what I know and to explain what I enjoy.

All meaning is an act of limitation, as one might choose God or not-God, love or not-love. In either instance God is present in love as your choice is present in love.

Form is the word I give to the fact of being, in arithmetic, the hours, faces identified in a photograph. The other day I left work and purposely watched every step, looked at everything I could, along the sidewalk, at the bus stop, on the bus ride, until I reached home. I might die at any moment, and I do not want to miss it. I want to be sure to be alive to the time and place. Every particular gives me a clue. I refuse to distinguish, to erect some sort of hierarchy. But in employing the form of the thing in creating another thing, which will be silent, I hope to enact a willingness that speaks to another's conscience. If I only am capable, and act, I might be saved at last.