Hinging the moment from slumber to stir is a tittering dash—a horizontal slash of the kind that clinches the sky and the land: an elusive, penumbral half-line; a twilight of mind; a movement unfurled and distinctly defined.
This is the dash: the most visceral of the perishing punctles, its aim: to attach. Sentimental, so sentient, the dash marks a pause of delight—one that tickles the mind in quickening rhyme. It is the punctle of dreams: devoid of the logos of colons, the machinations of the subliminal mind rely on the pathos of our most feverish sign. And isn’t it the most ambiguous of our punctative sprites, this frolicking line that billows in roving recline the contents of a diction sublime? Oh, Dickinson knew it!-- when in lonesome concealment she sequestered her mind within the boundaries of these limitless lines; she sings:
The Brain—is wider than the sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—
The pauses of the dash are tempered in movement; they itch to prolong a climactic caesura of restless delay; a tension lax; a furl of electric delight positioning combinations of lexeme amid springing, uncontainable, sparks.
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