A.R.Ammons


Corsons Inlet

    

I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning 

to the sea, 

then turned right along 

   the surf 

              rounded a naked headland 

              and returned 



   along the inlet shore: 



it was muggy sunny, the wind from the sea steady and high, 

crisp in the running sand, 

     some breakthroughs of sun 

  but after a bit 



continuous overcast: 



the walk liberating, I was released from forms, 

from the perpendiculars, 

     straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds 

of thought 

into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends 

          of sight: 



                 I allow myself eddies of meaning: 

yield to a direction of significance 

running 

like a stream through the geography of my work: 

   you can find 

in my sayings 

               swerves of action 

               like the inlet's cutting edge: 

        there are dunes of motion, 

organizations of grass, white sandy paths of remembrance 

in the overall wandering of mirroring mind:



but Overall is beyond me: is the sum of these events 

I cannot draw, the ledger I cannot keep, the accounting 

beyond the account: 



in nature there are few sharp lines: there are areas of 

primrose 

    more or less dispersed; 

disorderly orders of bayberry; between the rows 

of dunes 

irregular swamps of reeds 

though not reeds alone, but grass bayberry, yarrow, all . . .

predominantly reeds:  



I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries,

shutting out and shutting in, separating inside 

       from outside: I have 

       drawn no lines: 

       as 



manifold events of sand 

change the dune's shape that will not be the same shape 

tomorrow, 



so I am willing to go along, to accept 

the becoming 

thought, to stake off no beginnings or ends establish 

      no walls: 



by transitions the land falls from grassy dunes to creek

to undercreek: but there are no lines though 

     change in that transition is clear 

     as any sharpness: but "sharpness" spread out, 

allowed to occur over a wider range 

than mental lines can keep: 



the moon was full last night: today, low tide was low: 

black shoals of mussels exposed to the risk 

of air 

and, earlier, of sun, 

waved in and out with the waterline, waterline inexact, 

caught always in the event of change: 

    a young mottled gull stood free on the shoals 

    and ate 

to vomiting: another gull, squawking possession, cracked a crab, 

picked out the entrails, swallowed the soft-shelled legs, a ruddy 

turnstone running in to snatch leftover bits: 



risk is full: every living thing in 

siege: the demand is life, to keep life: the small 

white blacklegged egret, how beautiful, quietly stalks and spears 

         the shallows, darts to shore 

                  to stab —- what? I couldn't 

    see against the black mudflats—a frightened 

    fiddler crab? 



         the news to my left over the dunes and 

reeds and bayberry clumps was 

         fall: thousands of tree swallows 

         gathering for flight: 

         an order held 

         in constant change: a congregation 

rich with entropy: nevertheless, separable, noticeable 

       as one event, 

               not chaos: preparations for 

flight from winter, 

cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, wings rifling the green clumps 

beaks 

at the bayberries 

   a perception full of wind, flight, curve, 

   sound: 

   the possibility of rule as the sum of rulelessness: 

the "field" of action 

with moving, incalculable center:  



in the smaller view, order tight with shape: 

blue tiny flowers on a leafless weed: carapace of crab: 

snail shell: 

        pulsations of order 

        in the bellies of minnows: orders swallowed, 

broken down, transferred through membranes 

to strengthen larger orders: but in the large view, no 

lines or changeless shapes: the working in and out, together 

        and against, of millions of events: this, 

                 so that I make 

                 no form of 

                 formlessness:



orders as summaries, as outcomes of actions override 

or in some way result, not predictably (seeing me gain 

the top of a dune, 

the swallows 

could take flight—some other fields of bayberry 

       could enter fall 

       berryless) and there is serenity:



       no arranged terror: no forcing of image, plan, 

or thought: 

no propaganda, no humbling of reality to precept:



terror pervades but is not arranged, all possibilities 

of escape open: no route shut, except in 

   the sudden loss of all routes:



       I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will 

not run to that easy victory:

       still around the looser, wider forces work: 

       I will try 

     to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening

scope, but enjoying the freedom that 

Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision, 

that I have perceived nothing completely, 

       that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.

 


 

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