Shade Plant

Shade Plant

After centuries of surviving with low light
a plant begins to eat shadows
without complaint

then savors every variation of darkness

An oriole hopping from branch to fence
[a dumpling]
A leaf-heavy branch shifting only slightly
[bread]
Slender telephone wire
[wine]

What refuses to be known
to you through light
remember that this can make a fine meal

An Expedition

An Expedition

Let’s fill the field with gear we do not own:
a tent here, where the earth is flat and dry,
and on this side, the trunk full of paper
and microscope slides ready to clasp
glass palms around life forms, samples.
We are here to find examples, to collect
a piece that represents the whole, one moment
standing in for elephantine millenniums.
Without telescope or sextant. No tool is sensitive
enough for what we need: a way to record
how the sky above us will look in ten years,
in twenty, and where we will be watching
from then. And the charts to help us wander
back here. Sign post into night sky, that pulse
ricocheting inside of you the aftershock
of my hammer beating a hole in the heavens.