When I Zoom meet with my poet friend Wendy we often share things we’ve read and take some time to write. The following is inspired from Ron Paggett’s poem “How to Be Perfect”, found in Collected Poems 2013. This line in particular sparked interest: Keep Your Windows Clean.

Arctic window pane.
j.l.

Keep Your Windows Clean

The view is not what it seems. The frame, the dust-laced pane, the grooved sills filled with sleep gunk and fly corpses.

Glass flashes- a clear prison, a mottled prism.

j.l.

Keep Your Windows Clean.

Keep your gaze focused, take in the drift of light, the shuddering of a chill breeze. Accept the moon-ivoried night. Name the birds in flight. Number the glints of stars. View the tilt of earth and sky. Know the constant motion of that cant of sky and spin of earth. The falling away and gathering up.

View from the Pacer.
j.l.

Keep Your Windows Clean

It’s a job. Expand as you inhale, exhale, prop your chin on your fists and daydream.

We are behind clear planks as smooth as January wind-polished ice. We dwell between what is seen and how it is seen.

Arctic sketch, a view through memory’s window.
j.l.

Keep Your Windows Clean.

So that you can: know when October clouds roll in why you are weeping with the weather;
locate Orion striding home toward the horizon;
sift through reflection and refraction and separate embellishment from the
sheer scope and eye-tingling suspense and wonder of day after day;

j.l.

the cumulative sway as rooted things dance and rootless luminescence alights, balanced on your fingertips while you tap the glass as if it is a keyboard, with the letters worn away.

j.l.

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