Notes in Bathrobe Pockets

Foggy this morning. I’m thinking (again) about those pieces and images that can pierce through fog. For a writer. Or for a reader. The kinds of things that Janet Desaulniers is talking about, I think, when she talks about collecting. In his book, A New Path to the Waterfall, a book about, among other things, navigating loss, and navigating the approach of death, Raymond Carver includes an apparently simple poem: “His Bathrobe Pockets Stuffed with Notes”. The poem is made up of of thirteen fragments. Here are three:

Those dead birds on the porch when I opened up

the house after being away for three months.

“We’ve sustained damage, but we’re still able

to maneuver.” Spock to Captain Kirk.

The rabbi I met on the plane that time who gave me comfort

just after my marriage had broken up for good.