poem as lattice structure or bird snare put up
to catch clouds what others count as seasons/her hair as she departs

fold or hinge over creased made concrescent
that makes structure pursed kiss perhaps

as portal through to, as space of moonlit through window would
as a cross across, a hand that opens cups

then a sudden wind a sudden rain answers
ripples--what transits?

Cage glosses silence as absence of intention

secured through I-Ching (flash to me stalking Lisa

by throwing the i-ching over and over waiting for

chance to open the door) and Duncan leaves

spaces and leaves I say

no absence of intention as this

because object takes us/is plumb line

Cage says emptiness is something

but means ground

and that's what's not

beside flowers of sounds

and silence

Anne Carson writing on Sapho, notes the way Sapho introduces a third term--a man wooing a woman she admires (loves?)--and I lace this to the notion of the statue of a lover or stele made by a sculptor that seems to be a portal, but, given Sapho's scene, it is also a term (intermediary) that gives space--the space to admit or become aware of herself, to know she has eyes--

and this has me thinking about the poem as term or sign, record of images, or version of mind, and no different than how anything presents itself to us, covered, veiled, whether by word or sight

and thus folded, a fold in space or being that makes room

It's incredible that a sentence is ever understood. Mere sounds strung together by some agent attempting to mean some thing, but the meaning need not and does not confine itself to that intention. Those sounds, strung out as they are in their peculiar and particular order, never change, but do nothing but change. Even if grammatical recognitions are crude, meaning is present. Even if the words are utterly confusing, there is meaning. Even if the semantic relationships are only general or categorical. Even if the language is unknown. Meaning is internal, external, orbital, but there is still no such thing as propositional content. Language never really effaces its own presence, but creates the illusion that it does in cases where meaning presumes a first priority.

Percival Everett "erasure", p. 44.

Books Today and Yesterday; "Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers" by George Oppen; Percival Everett, "Erasure".