Most of them white and dead, most with exotic-sounding names like Kierkegaard or Neitzche. I reached for them knowing they could tell me something. Something that I could not reasonably live without. For years and years I tripped through the paper corridors of my mind and what I felt was an antique wonder and the disappointment of an empty home. I had found an intricately designed but abandoned wasps nest. I am not without gratitude for my reaching or their writing.
But there can be too many words trailing back to too many thoughts. So many books and so many opinions, so many forms of transport and yet no nearer the promised land. What now will we reach for? What will guide us home? The white clouds are ribbed by the wind like the moist sand by the waves of the sea. The kite, with its long reach circling above the earth, now vanished. The roses that were buds have opened, each petal unfolded imperceptibly in a sleepless night; 5 pink fragrant heads the size of a child’s hand. Surely they are celebrating something? And the sparrow gathers strands of biscuit-coloured grass from the lawn in her beak. It will build itself a home out of the things we consider of no worth, that we cast aside.
Colette Power 2016
Photograph Jurate Cesnaite
