The things we wished were metaphor were not

 Crisp January morning

Photo by Douglas Claytor

Here's a poem by Jeff Hardin:

A SINGULAR EVENT    by Jeff Hardin

A river is nearing flood stage, the town mostly

sleeping except for a few ardent souls. Winter

bears in from the west, though it is everywhere

the mind can imagine. A boy stands on a bridge.

Scenes like this one come and go often. An end

is reached, a point at which no other accompanies.

Our explanations are approximations and leave out

more than they include. We hold them all the more

fiercely. The things we wish were metaphor are not,

and the things we think are ordinary often become

haunting. Gauguin wrote in repetitive fragments,

meandering outside the reach of reason or linearity.

The line from one event to all the selves that follow

contains at least a thousand Ninevahs. The boy

will not learn history’s missteps, theology’s errors,

the effect of the human gaze on the object it perceives,

what happens to DNA when notes of Bach are played.

Soon the town will wake to news, what it knows,

what it doesn’t, what remains of what was never

there to begin with. Is there a single point of view?

The next thing that happens is never not happening.

Meaning rises, deepens, surrounds, fills. It carries on.

Crow in Trees and Snow       Brueghel