[Jim Moonan]

.
I had a sad thought: imagine if you had brought this poem to an audience that couldn’t see the diamond-like quality of your words and didn’t feel the quaking of the imagery present in the poem. Not everyone takes the time to read a poem to unlock its medicinal qualities/benefits. This poem (your poems) requires repeated readings and a meditative-like distillation of thought.

I say all this having been unimpressed initially with the poem. It was as if I was listening to a madman speaking. Then the comments came in and I gave the poem another chance, pressed my ear to it and shut my eyes tightly so that I could hearsee it. I zoomed out a zillion light years and saw the dust. I debated with myself if the likes of this poem would ever be seen in the New Yorker magazine. I think not. It would break the mold.

To say it in cliche, you're an old soul. You disturb the dust. To not disturb the dust is spiritually counterintuitive. Dust cannot be gathered. Either can words, in a way. We must find another way to say what we see and you’ve found a way, using words you sling together and rope-tie to being meaningful and imagery that is time-transcendent. (I’m speaking now way over my head; am groping at light, thanks to the vision you created in this poem.) Funny thing about dust: Its existence is an afterthought. I never think of dust for what it is: the bridge between visible and nonvisible— The oxymoronic existence of uninvisible dust.

I think the last line belongs. I like the ambiguity. I like what the word "again" does.

The poem makes me think hard about where all the flowers have gone. And that leads me to think of dust.

.