1.

A slug has responsibilities.

It must scale the tamarisk

even if, halfway, it’s plucked up

and placed on a leaf.

2.

On the road of serpents,

one encounters the moonstone.

Not always. But often.

It’s touched red, like a pear,

or a study of two pears.

3.

If a micromoth ascends

the heavens in the rain,

can Avalon be far off?

4.

The crab digs a hole

to forget his forgetting.

The Black Witch reminds him—

in dreams, or in daydreams

about dreams—of his forgetting,

which he remembers.

5.

I've been waiting for the rabbit

and reading Being and Time.

The rabbit doesn't read.

He chews and thumps the turf

as I search for one clear image.

6.

The green fields of August

won’t mend the past.

They bloom at last, bloom

real fast, like a sped-up film

of shadows over hills

or a fox consumed by ants.

7.

The ideas of ants

will devour the Sphinx.

Don't underestimate

their notional fervor,

their rhetorical bite.

It will happen at night.

It will be night somewhere

as they inscribe their oblivion.

8.

Even high-flying birds

need a rest. But

they keep working.

Like stick bugs in shallows,

or a termite thrumming

in the hallowed recesses

of a spruce.

9.

In this floating world,

the water makes its way,

takes its course, divorces itself

from the river it knew,

the one it was for a moment:

a flicker over rocks, a rush

through a sluice—the juice of earth

advances without remorse.

And we follow.