This is the ambition.
It is this thing on this page.
I sketch its features with these words, awkwardly
scratching lines with a childhood’s fantasy
now recreated, now resurrected;
this is its face.
This is its eye outlined, but where
lies the essence?
Words are not images. They are suggestions.
In writing,
I am trusting mankind.
Is there a common humanity? Do you—reader—
cup your hand in the same spring
and draw from its miracle formlessness
the shapes and colors of my mind?
I write how we dream,
sharing imagery and metaphor,
notes of a heart beating
as one.
This is a shared life.
The ambition again is this,
the desperate reach through the dark,
the splatter of acrylic onto lips,
the stirrings of your tongue, and
the whisper—
you, mouthing these words that you read.