The reading of a sentence is something like a stone skipped on water. One hurtles along the surface tension of recognized structure, powered either by the writer’s intension or the reader’s attention, until they sink. Punctuation is like the spot where the stone disappears. Look. Another sentence started; the attempt repeated. Sink.

See us together here trying to make sense. Sink.

A sentence has a structure that attempts to carry meaning, but having meaning and having a repeatable, recognizable structure that attempts meaning is not the same thing.

Words like stones are ancient and composite. Sink.

Some people find stones beautiful and useful despite their depressive density. Sink.

Perhaps it’s like Gerard Manley Hopkins said: “This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, is immortal diamond.”

But of course it might be that we are simply and senselessly synching runes of ruins.