This is the key line:

Would the line of light would freeze

See, it's true, I am a Platonist, even if I insist that Plato is not a PLatonist....

Would the line of light would freeze
And still the sun behind the sky
Would stay a moment there, and I
Would stay here, please!

I'd not be in a hurry to say that

"Reluctance" is the one poem I might say I wish I had written myself. (OK, "Acquainted with the Night", too, maybe. How may times have I said to myself "I have walked out in rain, and back in rain" ... but how hard it is, now, to outwalk every city light.) But the one line of Frost that I come back to (even more than "but he turned first", even more than "but here there are no cows") is: "it hit the moon".

I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon.”

It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.

I won't tell you now why I think of those lines so often--I mean, what I so often think of when I think of those lines--I mean, where I was when those lines first came to mind, when I looked out the window, and there was the moon, and the small sailing clouds. But whenever I think of inevitability, I think of that, sitting in that small room, thinking of those lines of Frost. I think of that when I stand on that small rock, jutting into the water, and I see the line of light, the line above which there is the yellow light in the green leaves, rising through the trees.

Found poetry

From earlier in the night:

Three hundred metres, maybe--
I crawled, following the gutter.
How the fuck did I get here?
I've gotta lay down right here.
Don't touch me.
She wouldn't let me lift her up --
She's knocking on the garbage can.

This darkness, heavy as a judgement

Currently at Toronto Pearson: 2, which is looking like the high for the day. Fortunately the EC records for the current Bancroft station only go back to 1995, so all I can determine is that this is the first year since at least 1994 that it hasn't gotten below freezing in Bancroft between Oct. 15 and Oct. 31.

One reason I want to get ahold of a telephoto lens and a tripod is so I can maybe get a better picture of this:



After the line of shadows gets past the tops of the trees along the shore, this mound of trees behind them surprisingly stays lit up for a while, glowing like Ayers Rock:



I've known for a couple of months that if I was going to come up with a poem this year, it would be about that. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten going on it if not for NaDruWriNi ... the funny thing about that is, though, of course, it goes to show how easy it actually is to get going--just put something down and it'll start working itself out. (The thing that always continues to seem hard is having a worthwhile idea in the first place.)

Anyway, ( here's the rough cuts. )

Damned if I know how many pints of Amsterdam (AKA Pauper's) Blonde I drank, but it was enough to give me violent hiccups and a moderate headache in the morning.