Granite Quarry Triptych, Unique
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Because You Understand This
Everything is watching you--the mockingbird,
the wood warbler, the jay, the crawfish frog,
carrion beetle, fungus beetle, the hanging fly;
everything is watching you, even the thick draw
of the tulip, the sunless center of the lidded
harebell bud, the underwater witch's nest--crowfoot,
bogbean--lungless salamander, the smallest circle
in the wound shell of the copper snail. Everything
stares. Each ring of the jingle shell, the stalk
of milk thistle, the blowing pine-needle
shadows reaching forward, forward and back,
on the stone walk, all are watching you.
Deep in its cave-stream, beneath its clear scale
and socket-skin, in its most impenetrable
unawareness, the eyeless glass fish attends,
and the tailless tenrec and the leaf-nosed
bat and the ruby mandrake in the dark
on the other side of the earth, even they,
and that which possesses only jawbone, naked
teeth in the north pasture, chipped femur,
scattered vertebra, that which possesses less
in the commodious muck of the pondbottom,
they too keep you in focus.
Everything, even the blind retina of underground
granite, even the ocular roll
of the thunderhead, even the solid
cold lens of the grey moon...
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