Along a sandy shoulder,
a field trip gathering stones.
We dozen children, collared shirts.
I found one unlike the others, felt its real heft.
Battleship gray with crevices worn smooth,
some unimaginable thing might be birthed and slither forth.
Hurried forward, drew it from my bag
“It’s slag,” he said, “it’s a piece of slag.”
Africa, to start with,
are you still the dark continent?
Riotous living, too much living
The cradle, as they say,
featuring sound and color I will never know.
A man from this company went upriver and stayed there.
Chart your boundaries and unspool wire
Vile and virus and gunfire.
No room will ever
compare to the first room.
Membranous curtain, united pulses
Before the tipping point, before abstraction ruins everything.
First exploration as a spasm,
beak or feather against the porcelain barrier.
Nourishing some inner seed
The urgency of real need.
Waiting in the hallway,
squinting into photographs
Skull expansion, subsequent migrations
Muddled thinking, struggling to remember the sequence.
It’s best to record each detail,
the tips of your fingers along a pantleg.
All of this is familiar to you
It is written on your body.
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