Abrupt

microscopic multiplying,
great shapes nudging towards becoming.
something down there.
pond scum rippling,
green waves lap my feet.

then at once the pond explodes,
in fountains spiral up,
an agony of peptides.
geyser spinning, spinning,
folding in upon itself.
and the sound washes over me.

fifty thousand cycles:
sunning Hell days dusty rocks,
albumen sucked from shattered eggs,
flapping panicked wings…
a smear of blood on the savannah.

biology, the manic squawking
over wave-assaulted rocks
compounded, trilobyte, exertion,
rainfall stirs the smell of ferns.
and organism slithers onto throne.

from shore I see it rolling on
towards completion of a sort,
which I will never know —
except as cells
know the mysteries of music,
the sadness beneath the laughter.

HAIR-CAKED SCABS

FLIES SIP TEARS

THIS TREE

COOL SHADE

EACH NIT PICKED

IN THE LONG MOAN OF CENTURIES

THEN THOUGHT EXPLODES

                   Hominized

         Wild fragments in communion

                                                                        Harmonized
                                                       Like the spirochete

                       Whose impetus

                                                       Mocks the flicking spiral

                                 Of Mind’s ascent

This bird’s grating squawk
predates the rusting of springs
and the slamming of screen doors
Yet on porches across America
its metal cry is echoed.

Where do we, in nature’s swelling plan,
find our mirror?