—Nabokov
We dredge
the stream with soup strainers
and
separate dragonfly and damselfly nymphs—
their eyes
like inky bulbs, jaws snapping
at the
light as if the world was full of
tiny traps,
each hairpin mechanism
tripped for
transformation. Such a ricochet
of
appetites insisting life, life, life against
the watery
dark, the tuberous reeds. Tell me—
how do they
survive passage? I rinse our cutlery
in the
stream. Heat so heavy it hurts the skin.
The drone
of wild bees. We swim through cities
buried in
seawater, we watch the gods decay.
We dredge
the gods of other civilizations.
The sun,
for example. Before the deity became a
star. Jasper
scarabs excavated from the hearts of
kings. Daylight's blue-green water pooling
at the
foot of
falls. Sandstones where the canyon spills
its verdant
greens in vines. Each lunar
resurrection,
each helix churning in the cells
of a sturgeon
destined for spawning—
Not equilibrium,
but buoyancy. A hallway
with a
thousand human brains carved out of crystal.
Quiet
prisms until the sunlight hits.
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