We now know that accidents accord in fashion to arteries and caves, muscle-tissue tied up in ribbons, in the margin of the body’s milk. And then the theater quits to imitate imperfections. How and when the overlapping wake, wave, and crest of the maze-like thing. Planting spices in the ear, in forms, as coins and beds. If any place has more names than the sun. Breath, a straying of the self. We now know that the wind is not a metaphor. A sweet and jilted sense of enchantment will take a bath in difference, then talk too loud to think, then lark alike in its decrease. How and when to use discretion, that watery drink. Highwire inside the boat, to tailor the mention of money. We once longed for great abstraction. Now and then the effluvia of boredom and sentiment. We now know the difference between the animals and the shapes of their hair, advertised through absence, harvesting the odd exception from overfed conversation. To bring color for the face, to gifts of string. We once believed the molecule knew the future, and asked it about the lottery. Now and then it answers. We struggle to get into the obituaries, accidentally to succeed. We know our breathing does not manufacture wind, and yet we breath the same.
Photograph of poem draftPhotograph of poem draft