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Page 42

In a way, it really doesn't matter
what you put on the page, because
the poem that finds readers is,
in the long run, the poem that
makes it possible for you to put
more words on the page.

Each word makes the blankness
of pages more or less solid,
more or less resistive to your words.
If, after filling one page, you can fill
another, you must have said something
to someone. If the pages get easier
and easier to fill, you are doing
something right. If the blankness
increasingly stares at you and dares you
to write a word or sneers or pretends
to ignore -- it is your ability
to write words on that blankness
and continue to write words
on that blankness -- not what you say,
but the saying, the implicit reach
of life to life, the hello in even
the grimmest good-byes; the ability
and the act -- that makes you...

what does it make you? A writer?
An idiot savant? Alive? Yes, alive.

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