“My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely

specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has

given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only i had

grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It’s not that I’m curious. On

the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the

earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.” - Frank O’Hara

I am re-discovering Frank O’Hara. When I read him, I feel diamond cut movements of exhiliration. I feel as if I an watching a stripe of light bounce inside the chamber of a gem.

“This is the everyday we
    spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight
    pours through

the open living room windows because the heat’s on too high in here, and
    I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street,
    the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying
    along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my
    wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called
    that yearning.What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to
    pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss – we want more and more and
    then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the
    window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing
    so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m
    speechless:

I am living, I remember you.”

-Marie Howe