Once long ago I rewrote a book in a week.
I don’t know if it was better once I was done
but that week there were words everywhere
like swarms of gnats or of buzzing bees

It was on St. John in March the year
a hurricane whose name I’ve forgotten
ripped off many roofs which were replaced
by plastic tarps as blue as the sea

I sat still at the center of all those words
without asking what had possessed me
or why I had to do this or what was coming
out of me onto the screen of the laptop

I didn’t write all the time, but spent hours
on the reefs and among the many millions
of silvery minnows that gave way to me
as I swam among them – it was different

to be in the water and to be rocked gently
and to feel the winterless sun on my back,
to be horizontal not vertical, to watch the fish
in tropical tailored clothing as they passed by

While this salty second immersion went on,
the first continued, too, not writing but what
writing is before it can be known as writing,
prospecting in dark mind’s phosphorescence

For the book I rewrote in that one island week
I found words as many as I needed, but for me,
for what was happening in me that week, none,
save that I traveled far beyond passport’s writ

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