‘detail of my sort of so-early half-lit eyelid light’

I want to share this poem with you. If you like it, you’ll know why. If you don’t, you should read it again.

-Aida

Detail of My Sort of Light
by Ander Monson
from The Available World

Now I know that everything is a body,
so even the snow and the sand and
the blood rivered down in the snow,
and snowed on again so it’s buried
is a body. All things are bodies in photos—
detail of the left side of a breast and the arm’s
pit—detail of the sled slumbered under
by the storm’s leavings. Detail of my sort
of so-early half-lit eyelid light that bodies
are near to invisible and touch is no longer
the sole way of knowing, and outline is all
that there is. Detail of your body as it does
its morning leaving thing. Detail of what
light there is on your skin. Detail of land-
scape of let me in please and coffee, warm
when the weather’s action on this body is less
than ideal. Landscape with pear. Landscape
with weather and part of a breast in the frame.