Category: Wonders

In Magnetic Fields

Movements of a charged particle.

What strange gravity is this, which won’t be understood by common measurements––of time, or distance, mass or reason––against which I have been trained to measure and describe what I am? Against (or within) this, I am a particle at a level beneath the body, beneath even what I took to be the building blocks of any body, and I am charged before I am, without an after, circling in exchange with other bodies, perpendicular to the threads of a vast web I cannot see, and I do not know myself.

Wink

Witness standing

Stars throb against the rim of what I see, and my reaching hands hold like waving a signal to the departed, We’re over here! Come join!

And in their winking response I glimpse the humor of their restraint before my limits. I always think the thing to bear is longing and never consider arrival, or the unspoken answer to the questions I’ve begged. 

And where do you think we’ve gone off to? And which of us is missing, now?

Notes at Sunset, Facing East

Wanting to breathe

When asked, it is air we want. Birdsong too, but to admit the latter feels like pushing it so let’s start with breath. When not asked, we raise hands to sky. From the bay windows high above us, members of the homeowners association shake their heads. Our pause confirms what someone was just saying about our idle ways. What on earth are we doing if not climbing? We are even slow in our greetings––total inefficiency! This bracing way of clasping both arms at once as though holding against a tipping ship, holding the gaze for balance as we ask, How are you? And in wonder, it is so good to see you here even if we both know the birds are leaving and here hasn’t been so hot for some time. Perhaps especially because we know this, there is wonder. Here we are!

You! We say, and You! We respond even as each also knows how the overlords are doing something with the air––they learn to parcel this in packaged plans through air-conditioned boards. Yes, they will divide this, too. No, they will not take us while we are still so efficiently removed from our next breaths instead and they call our deaths collateral, shaking heads at our parents and the wayward ways that led to our lazy arms reaching above our dazed faces into the not-yet sun we have the gall to dare to know us well enough to draw from memory our shadows beside where we stand and it will not stay––

but for a moment we are painted silhouettes, mighty against the next hill where we stand with our backs in indolent refusal of the million-dollar views, faces aimed again to the next morning as we mourn the way of knowing that comes with knowing we will never be ready but still, missing birdsong, dare to breathe, believing the next day will come

Plaything

Playtime with cephalopod.

They were infamously difficult to study, known to refuse the crude foodstuffs offered by scientists as offensive to their refined tastes.  For example, they would have nothing to do with frozen shrimp. These members of the phylum Mollusca were likely not what Plato had in mind when he observed that if we are the playthings of the gods, then play is the most serious thing we do. Such considerations simply were not made. To do so would be to a blasphemy of unspeakable genus. The custom, when it came to describing the creatures one preferred to dissociate from was to declare them to be incapable of thought––an interesting and even artful collection of cells and systems, patterns and even grace, but not cognition. 

It was reasoned that for these non-thinking others that were surely quite unlike ourselves, there could be no fear of death beyond instinct and therefore neither mourning nor inclination to register captivity as tragic. After all, how could a creature incapable of foresight lament the possibility that it may not return to the known world?

Among our kind, certain unknowns often register as their own justifications. We have within us a tremendous capacity to decorate our blind spots in manners suggestive of insight. 

Then an octopus was observed to gather stones at the mouth of the den that it entered, presumably to prevent the entrance of potential intruders. Foresight? Perhaps. Some scientists conceded.

Later, the scientists observed the difficult creatures in play, bouncing objects, juggling, manipulating out of curiosity––us?

The creatures were indeed capable of a great deal, but surely not that. It was declared. Studies continued.

***

Inspired by this morning’s encounter with and excerpt of David Toomey’s work in LitHub “On the Uncanny Way Octopuses Play.”

Morning

Breeze at dawn.

Red sun? The weight of grace.
Pelt of bottle caps? Dragon’s hide.
In this world? But not to know.
Come? Closer.

Next time you see this, it will have another face.
This is about the shuffling on the ground.
Take off your shoes and we will gather cloth.
For what? A revival garment to resemble time.

Force Like Water

Upon arrival.

Sometimes, with the predictable mess already seeming to be written as it laps with greedy lips at the attention of the assembled, hungry for confirmation of certain known pillars of popular opinion, it is easy to miss the appearance of this other thing, which will show itself sometimes to those who are tired of looking, of taking in the spectacle of predictable tropes. Today, for example, it was a creature of spectacular plumage, resting its wings in the rafters in the dark, its feathers so bright they glowed. Looking down between bouts of casual grooming, the creature had about itself such a stark matter-of-factness that my first reaction was to assume that my mind was up to one of its old tricks, dreaming or conjuring this image from fatigue or delusion. Delusions, as anyone knows, are always reluctant to give themselves up.