May/June 2003 Literature Features

ARTICLE TOOLS

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I am a circle. My perimeter moves
in any direction—up, down,
sideways, forward. My center
is the center everywhere, for I gather
the world around me where I happen to be.
It is alarming how quickly I climb
your khaki pantleg, then scurry over
the grass you brush me to, climb up a tree
though I seem to have no head for direction,
hurrying and standing still at the same time.
One of me is as good as a thousand, for I
meet myself coming back in passages through time,
matter and anti-matter,
monads and mirrors.
Though I move I am still here
and here and here and here,
my scurrying legs
the mere static of time
in the brilliance of being.

I appear to have no eyes, no ears,
no mouth. I am a single thought
surrounding itself, a singular idea,
an eye staring at the inside of the universe,
a pinpoint of light which holds within itself
the history of the Big Bang
and the revolving archangels of the Deity,
the Pleistocene and Waterloo
and the Grammy Awards,
a singularity indeed
from which all flows and circles on itself.

I am brown
as a bun and a cushion button,
my legs thin as hairs.
Where I am, I hold all down
for a moment, then move on
invisible in the grass until
I am again crawling up your arm
as if desperate with a message,
as if to climb the air were no great feat
on invisible threads of light
to give some intelligence of earth to the sun.

A small Martian robot,a space module, a moving camera.a heat-measuring spectroscopegathering the information of surfaces,computing it and sending it backas I touch everything lightly,a measuring upand radioing of it to a transcendent network—my legs like the hair of Einsteinor the mad scientist'sor the movies where brains with beaks take overand siphon everyone up until matter shrivelsand everything is just an empty sleeveand earth ...