Coming Into Being

The go-between climbs a pole

to touch that slippery knowledge

that lets one domain interfere with another

Plunges to depths where

submarines would collapse like accordions

Performing a hybrid of church and circus

or some form of excavation:

 

More than the sum of its parts,

less than the limit of stiff-upper-lip.

 

If this were anything but literature,

the tonic effects of an afternoon off

could shatter at any time.

 

Fortune appears like a river

that bursts now and then from its banks,

laying waste to all in its path.

 

But when the river is not in flood

are we not capable of taking precautions,

asks Machiavelli, so next time it rises

its force will not be so destructive?

 

Luminous visitations,

The pleasures of order and roots:

Doomed to shipwreck are those

Who try to cross the rivers of fear

On such poor rafts as these.

 

Everything in Nature, says Santayana

(seeming more wistful than bitter)

is in its different facets

either lyrical, comic or tragic.

Which might make sense

if we didn’t have bodies.

 

In a system based on relation

the road is cobbled with metaphors

coming into being.

 

With old pots one makes the best soup.