National Poetry Month #22

 I've only just met this poem and, though I don't understand it all yet, I find it provides something positive. Perhaps it's just my present state, or the storm outside, or worrying about the chickens.

From what I can work out, the "fugal" of the title refers to "fugue", which is a musical term, but also has a psychological meaning, along the lines of losing one's sense of identity. Titles of poems are always important. In this poem, the gaps and the lack of punctuation is important too.

Fugal state by Melinda Smith
 
Always returning upon the paths of time,
we are neither ahead nor behind; late is early, near is far
Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster
 
You are always beginning again —
it is only a matter of degree:
you walk into a room, forgetting
 
the book you came looking for, walk out
with a dirty glass     you lay down
another ring     without realising
 
like a tree     it doesn’t hurt a bit
You are always beginning again:
you walk into the forest, forgetting,
 
there is a storm, there is a morning,
you walk out, trailing possibilities
from your hands     they drip, like
 
snapped branches     There was a storm,
there was a morning     There was
a name, once, a specific and grievous
 
history, a mobile number, a particular sequence
of houses, an immunity to certain indignities,
there was more and more forgetting
 
Entering a room full of bonsai, you breathe
moss, and cypress, and the clean, bald smell
of long-dry river-stones     The air hums
 
with age, with what the trees have known
and have forgotten     and will know again
they are always beginning
 
you breathe, you dream     you have been
reborn     as a small ceramic deer
You sit under the momiji, the scarlet
 
baby’s hands of the Japanese maple,
in a forest small enough
to fit on a dinner plate
and begin
again