Peirce, "Imaginary Lines"

When we said logic was transcendental,
we felt other words we might have said
find form the way shadows find form, with dependence
on things both intimately close and infinitely separate, palpable as
the sky palpating with a blue we saw and loved and never felt
surrounded by, palpable as what we saw with our eyes closed.
We could feel the unsaid begin to touch our mouths
the same way shadows began first where two things met
and might be parted, where touch obscured
a body's edge so brilliantly.
How casually the light declined. The roundest pearls
gave way to oval shadows. Mornings we found
it snowed all night. There was often a feeling of rest gathering
to meet itself outside ourselves; there was the feeling
that thinking one thing had caused another thing to be.


Kathleen Peirce

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