SHARD TWENTY-FIVE [KAYAK]

The curtain falls at last upon the tale

of wondrous beings grown; demolished; and
reclaimed by that-which-plays-with,-then-discards.
It may have seemed the beasts' time was wasted,
but Time produces many children and 5
surrenders them in turn. The children are
completely unaware of how it works –
of how these parents have arranged it all.
The beasts had disremembered whom they'd been
before, and there is subtle play in this. 10
Recall how they carried themselves throughout
their common fate: as heroes trudging on.
The layered thing that’s held in open hands
or waits upon the shelf, this Butterfly
of still-winged book you scan from left to right, 15
is the only source of this conceit.
Forswear the research you might otherwise
pursue, the years of toil and labor spent
in seeking signs concerning any part
of this account. No shards of tall amphorae 20
depict the intertwining forms of those
confined in jail or placed in brutal strife
of battle with a host of blameless foes.
No volumes will corroborate the lay
recorded here; none wait upon the shelves 25
in long forgotten rooms. Behold, an only child.
So come, unfold those arms, embrace this song,
the slowly-ripened fruit of a walking Tree,
that bloomed from bud of thought, was tended, pressed
between the leaves of other, brother Trees, 30
and spread across a thousand unknown fields,
to keep that subtle death at bay. We’ve gone
together (you and I) for quite a while;
If you have read this story I am glad –
whatever your reception, here it is: 35
a child of words, as others have delivered.
Now spreading mists and muffled sounds replace
the sound of speech. But from the nascent void
come queries still insistent: Why were the beasts
saved? What changed them? Questions have an answer. 40
A Cloud of dust that drifts and slowly turns
defeats the shade of nothingness. The Cloud
felt lonely once; it craved adventure, wished
to hide and seek. It blew itself to bits

1
so as to quench its everlasting thirst 45
for stories and emotions. The get of that
explosion may opine that World cannot
display compassion; even so, this World
of ours is child of Cloud. However harsh
it may at times appear, this Cloud is grateful; will 50
sustain us; shares a tool with which we all
become the actors and the characters
in a wordless tale. The love within us makes
us each a knight upon a field, for that
is how the Cloud, though scattered, harvests. It 55
observed and understood the termites, and changed
the dead as the sea accepts returning waves.