Dirty the Minnow and the Book, Harry

Dirty Harry is a beautiful movie in many ways. It matches any other movie I can think of for movement-in-time, the capture of capture in situ. The gun employed is a metaphor of course for original sin. Clint Eastwood's hair is the hay in the manger at the inn where the Lord was born. And, there are dashikis.

But whereas Clint Eastwood is too old to make another "Dirty Harry" film, and has said so, the book of poems will not go away, even as it pretends it might. No, as writers, we are either writing books, immersed, stressed, or we are pretending not too, vacant, depressed. There is too much talk about what is done with books in light of the fact that the books are made regardless. Books are to poets what droppings are to pigeons or icicles to the North wind. One might say - be entitled to state - that his/her book makes a point, has a purposes, etc. But no one really cares, unless it is to that person's purpose to say so. No, the point of any book is that of the leaf that falls to the exact spot on the forest floor that was inscribed in the book of Ages.

Interest describes all. We stand, we fall, we get up in fits and droves. An announcement reaches our ears. We head home in caravans and on pogo sticks. I for one will check the minnow traps for lost excuses, the flickering self. But the books will go on. The books. The. Books.

Punk.