Carapace
(for QW.)
This order of the pieces noticed then
blithely, contra now in course of study,
suggested rather natural routes to me:
blowing up, or zooming out, rotation
by slight degrees, a handful chosen well,
fitting what I know to what I practiced.
A thousand peepers having just had gills
or the nucleation points in kettles
appearing, disappearing through the cusp,
petrifying as it is, of presence
and weaker categories feebly fenced
off from that one, posts completely rusted.
What I’m imagining as fences, dark
brown in pitcher black, they line the roadside
to keep the cows from crossing while the night
constellates the big and small, forgets our
articulated board of many paths.
Every path discovered as an echo
reflecting possibilities of those
pieces. Shoots of pioneering cabbage
erupting through the soaking nondescript
foliage a step away from pavement.
I blink and suddenly fictitious ends,
peals of reason, flood that basin, visit
its shyest divots, effortless replies
I can make to silence if I’m clumsy.
The focal point of statements meant to free
thing from thing, to pull them from their hiding,
a kind of sturdy wicker basket filled,
fruit by fruiting puff, with living corpses.
The metaphor admits a double source:
designating fruit as that which fissions,
the basket drips, proliferating spores
thereby taking back the work of piling
that I could do in some amount of time,
step by step, with volatile powers.
However, fruit will also do to mark
juicy catastrophic taxidermy
of all this effort, flatten freeze congeal
wholes or halves, a masquerade of patterns
as if the stakes of canning were replete
with assurances of mass extinction
or continuity, instead of lids
sealing tight enough for pectin, heat
to do my dirty work behind the glass.
Strictly speaking, work is done or undone
depending on the first of us to budge:
me, from my insistence on the vastness
accessible to ordinary truths,
likely errant in the ways that matter,
or barely macroscopic tadpoles turned,
shapeless, bubbling with familiar features
I might have words for, into certainties,
easy answers cut from sheaves of peeping,
and almost, only almost, promised neat
referents. Both anticipate the fruit tree
about to fall, from chainsaw or its age
sagging more with every winter, driven
to stand and mark the corners of the fence,
swampy section, and the freeway, bravely
preferring elegance in every case.
I prefer to call this order, maybe
I’ll learn the proper way to count the piece
missing, subtle points, the moon, a one-way.