Friday, September 22, 2017

mmdccxxxii

          Small colors are the life of coping waters
                                                        —Cassie Lewis

If, perhaps, one looks around

to examine S M A L L . . . . .
If I look.  The buses have
more volume, less space.
All of our prisoners
have escaped the
frontiers.  Life is rising
from the garden, for
example.  Look how
the eggplant sprawls,
enveloping surface,
until it bursts.  I am
the error in the garden
of small.  Small colors
are only half real, if
that.  Yesterday, as I
continue to punctuate,
is memory.  Only that.
And memory becomes
a midden ———
a mountain of youthful
adventure (useful ad-
venture?), of feast
and (rarely) famine,
until the memory
dislocates, at first
dissolving into some-
thing very small, then
into a nothingness
only a volcano might
keenly recall.  I
recognized the turtle,
its protruding green
meat, as if it had just
escaped from the local
zoo.  As if it had just
been to the zoo. 
I looked on as it ——
ventured? —— in awe
of the mass of
profusion coming
from such a
shallow hand-
crafted shell.