[R. Nemo Hill]

As usual, Cameron, I read this poem as a part of your work as a whole, a work which seems always to be initiating me into your world where things are not 'seen' in the usual way, where they are un-seen, or seen with senses other than the eyes. Here the emphasis is given to listening, for the poet is talking as you two are walking through the city, a city that you (and thus we) hear more than see. I can, as I read, hear (and feel) the blasts of desperate merriment spilling out through the doors of bars passed by, a background accompaniment to the voices of poetic colloquy. I remember long walks of my own through the city, solitary walks, where the revelry of strangers seemed so different from that of my own neighborhood with its own close circle of inebriates, the strange distance I felt as if my eyes were closing to it, transforming it to blasts and shadows. I love the fact that though you admire the poet, yet you are obsessively intent on holding onto your own hard-won modes of perception; that you stay cognizant of the fact that one can be "blind with seeing"; that you resist "starting to see like you". In a way we are all blinded to any world other than our own and, more poignantly than most, a poet sends his words out like seeing-eye-guides to navigate the larger world and to bring messages from his or her own. Here to be blind or to be drowned are overlapping states, each with its own "washed-up clarity" whose lonely tenuousness is what creates the tension of affection shared by all wanderers who feel their way through a world too large not to include them as night and day trade places ad infinitum. I too know of Josh, more distantly, I think he is a fine poet, but can imagine myself resisting him as well (though we have never shared moments as intimate as these).

The drunkenness that plays out both through biography and myth here, well it introduces a complex state for me—as I used to embrace alcoholism with all my strength of soul, but have fallen far away from drinking. Ditto the somewhat daunting specter of this city, an apparition I was once willingly, even wantonly, possessed by, but one that I now avoid. I have always held it a matter of principal not to summarily reject anything that was once of passionate value to me, and thus, in a way (my own way) "to hold / these ghosts atomed inside" me "from decay".

The poem walks a fine line, balanced between blindnesses.
Perhaps it is its ability to un-see that makes its affectionate tribute so clear-eyed.
My own eye thanks your eye for it.

Nemo