GROWTH

Mind poised at the tipping point in a fantasy of perpetual motion like an old-fashioned toy, wooden bird hinged at the hips that bends again & again into the undiminished fuel of its reflection. Last week, I saw the sun in the surface of a bog: it bubbled. It trilled like a toad. The alchemists would be pleased, mercury now lurks nearly everywhere. Its needle threads the eye of mother’s milk, quick- silver fin & feather, legs of a heron. Extract of death, let us dance. Let our bones be honey- combed with light. Bulbous, wedded to our rituals, we take turns bending at the hips.