by Catherine Rockwood
The speaker of the poem dreamed
of a tapestry of diatoms.
No that’s not right, not a tapestry
more like nothing, a great dark blank
or night, though not depthless. And, threading it,
crystals on invisible vertical strings.
No, not crystals. Living things, like diatoms
always variably growing
new siliaceous blades. Radiate. Reaching
to touch. Not all could
or not for every neighbor, but when two
or three or four did meet they pushed, they spun
singing, each on its axis, glorying
in what they’d learned each of the other. Time
withdrew itself to let them sing and spin.
::
Catherine Rockwood reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine, and reviews books for Strange Horizons. Her poetry chapbooks, Endeavors to Obtain Perpetual Motion and And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death, are available from the Ethel Zine Press. Their sporadically-maintained website is www.catherinerockwood.com/about.
Image: Ryan Plomp
ID: a close up of light bulbs in many-sided glass fixtures.
Psaltery & Lyre 