Unwittingly, A Reading, A Favorite

Ah, another of my favorites. The minimalist poetry of John Burnside. I can never decide what this poem is about really. Dreams, the past, past lives, maybe? Perhaps all three. It doesn't matter, I love it. How I know exactly what he is saying, how I don't know. Enjoy. . .

Unwittingly I’ve visited the place where thought begins: pear trees suspended in sunlight, narrow shops, alleys to nothing but nettles and broken wars; and though it might look different to you: a seaside town, with steep roofs the colour of oysters, the corner of some junkyard with its glint of coming rain, though someone else again would recognise the warm barn, the smell of milk, the wintered cattle shifting in the dark, it’s always the same lit space, the one good measure: Sometimes you’ll wake in a chair as the light is fading, or stop on the way to work as a current of starling turns on itself and settles above the green, and because what we learn in the dark remains all our lives, a noise like the sea, displacing the day’s pale knowledge, you’ll come to yourself in a glimmer of rainfall or frost, the burnt smell of autumn, a meeting of parallel lines, and know you were someone else for the longest time, pretending you knew where you were, like a diffident tourist, lost on the one main square, and afraid to  inquire. John Burnside