Summary

Cornwall – first person, past tense / multiple stanzas, blank verse. The speaker describes the experience of feeling words drop through a mist, and how, when the mist cleared, the word was both visible and worthless. The speaker describes having this experience while living in a house in the country, writing being done in a journal. Words, the speaker says, vanished into the night, giving the feeling, to the speaker of being at an end of something, “as though the tree that confronted my parents / had become an abyss shaped like a tree” (28). The speaker suggests that there was relief at being able to go home; that there was a struggle in trying to keep writing the journey; and that the lights of the city were dimmed and blurred by fog. The speaker put the journal aside; sometimes, narration says, “the phone rang” (29); and days passed...