want only to see
my father back in time where
no one made mistakes
Adapted from the line:
She wanted now only to see her father, to go back to that country in time where no one made mistakes.
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
She had memorized those words at the time of her father’s death, had repeated them as she walked down streets and brushed her hair, as she lay in bed and as she drove the river road, and she repeated them now . . .
From the book, Run River by Joan Didion.
The above line is preceded by the line, “She was not sure that it would be all right even if they could go back to that morning on the river and start over again; because she could not put her finger on what was wrong it would only go wrong a second time.”
Knowing that in your past is a crossroads.
Knowing that in your past your took one of the roads.
Was it the right road?
If you could back, would you take the other road?
Or would you hope for that country were there no mistakes.
Maybe to back to be with your father.
A lot of thoughts in not too many words.
That was the style of Joan Didion.
Joan Didion, the eminent journalist, author and anthropologist of contemporary American politics and culture – a singularly clear, precise voice across a multitude of subjects for more than 60 years – has died at her home in Manhattan, New York. She was 87 years old.
(Taken from the obit in the Guardian).
Ms. Didion wrote, “A place,” she once wrote, “belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.“
I like that a lot.
No Haiku For You 