Professor Martel’s Startling Conclusion (4 of 10)

F O U R


Repetitions of repeated things,
Professor Martel’s days

cut a clear route to thought,
an efficient routine to thinking.

Thinking, not only, but also
the expression of those thoughts.

A written voice found phrase
and clear construction accessible.

With each pencil stroke,
as with a swimmer gaining energy

with each swimming stroke,
Professor Martel checked the sea of thoughts

ahead of him
and checked-off destinations easily ranged

setting instead as his destination
a distant breaker

sound obscured
by an equally distant horizon of fog –

thought-fog, rather, the unknown
and uncodified known around

some pattern, some essence,
some repeating thing, some description

waiting for words to describe it.
Thoughtful and considered words.

And like a swimmer
Professor Martel felt himself immersed

in the thought-stuff around him,
supported by and skimming through

the stuff, breath as practiced
as the motions that kept him moving.

And Professor Martel knew, too,
that the thought-stuff around him

offered an open embrace
as warm – or as cold – as water

offered. A comforting embrace.
An embrace motionless, still.

An expressive and loving embrace.
But an end to movement.

To repeated things.
To “accumulated expressiveness.”

An expressive and loving embrace,
expressive and loving

something, somehow, somewhere.
Embracing something, somehow, somewhere.

*

Thinking, writing, eating,
going to the bathroom, sleeping – I

allowed myself
some distractions, too, just to keep them in hand.

Transient distractions.
Sensual moments. Allowed, welcomed,

they kiss and go. Refused,
they intrude and brood, long, center-state.

Time then became every breath
and every breath drew out breathing

into vast time-cycles
like memories of youth or fears of age.

Time became
like a glass of cold soda: Grip-able. Drinkable.

Time became
a thoughtful thing, expressible, too: A pleasure.