PRACTICE
He photographed the corner of his room.
He did it over and over, the camera
standing on its tripod, a waiting eye he opened
when the corner asked him to—the corner
where wall met ceiling met wall. The walls held up
the ceiling; the ceiling suspended the walls.
He was practicing for the long illness
on which he might ride his bed toward death,
from his pillow studying the corner
through a lens dying made. He was practicing
to trigger the shutter tomorrow, on his way
like a live man through the room.
–from Rattle #23, Spring 2005
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Andrew Bode-Lang: “The poems I love best feel like they breathe the world in, let it out renewed—renewed or complicated often in just one breath. I write because poems, on occasion, let me breathe like that. And because they give me hope that I might.”
