The wind orchestrates its theme of loneliness and the rain has too much glitter in it, yes. They are like words, the wrong ones, insisting I listen to sense. But I too am obstinate. I have white walls, white curtained windows. What need have I of the night's jet-black, outlandish ornament? What I am after is silence in proportion to desire, the way music plumbs its surfaces as straight words do the air between them. I begin to learn the simple thing burning through to an impulse at once lovely and given to love that will not be refused.
From Spindrift by Vona Groarke. Copyright © 2011 by Vona Groarke. Reprinted with permission of Wake Forest University Press. All rights reserved.