It might be continuous—the despair he experiences
Over the imperfection of the unfinished, the weaving
Body of the imprisoned moon fish, for instance,
Whose invisible arms in the mid-waters of the deep sea
Are not yet free, or the velvet-blue vervain
Whose grainy tongue will not move to speak, or the ear
Of the spitting spider still oblivious to sound.
It might be pervasive—the anguish he feels
Over the falling away of everything that the duration
Of the creation must, of necessity, demand, maybe feeling
The break of each and every russet-headed grass
Collapsing under winter ice or feeling the split
Of each dried and brittle yellow wing of the sycamore
As it falls from the branch. Maybe he winces
At each particle by particle disintegration of the limestone
Ledge into the crevasse and the resulting compulsion
Of the crevasse to rise grain by grain, obliterating itself.
And maybe he suffers from the suffering
Inherent to the transitory, feeling grief himself
For the grief of shattered beaches, disembodied bones
And claws, twisted squid, piles of ripped and tangled,
Uprooted turtles and rock crabs and Jonah crabs,
Sand bugs, seaweed and kelp.
How can he stand to comprehend the hard, pitiful
Unrelenting cycles of coitus, ovipositors, sperm and zygotes,
The repeated unions and dissolutions over and over,
The constant tenacious burying and covering and hiding
And nesting, the furious nurturing of eggs, the bright
Breaking-forth and the inevitable cold blowing-away?
Think of the million million dried stems of decaying
Dragonflies, the thousand thousand leathery cavities
Of old toads, the mounds of cows’ teeth, the tufts
Of torn fur, the broken feet, the contorted eyes, the rank
Bloated odors, the fecund brown-haired mildew
That are the residue of his process. How can he tolerate
Knowing there is nothing else here on earth as bright and
salty
As blood spilled in the open?
Maybe he wakes periodically at night,
Wiping away the tears he doesn’t know
He has cried in his sleep, not having had time yet to tell
Himself precisely how it is he must mourn, not having had
time yet
To elicit from his creation its invention
Of his own solace.
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