Variance

Itio 

 

Cherished function, unknown variance,

Oh cellophane ripple and velvet fold,

Unbridled senescence and decaying adolescence,

Wet, sinewy dawn.

A character scorned, though through thinness passing

Through and through a simplicity:

Like the rules that govern our favorite colors,

Or those that create our portentous histories

Simple, like a gleam too soon in a baby’s eye.

The challenge, I suppose, is not by hands two’s creation

Or by minds some imperfect invention,

Instead to accept the fate of billions,

Whirling atoms becoming and unbecoming

For a brief moment to think! to render what dreams

We may so profess as our own. And it is not some lofty feat.

So soon we post upon the walls, having suffered the same scorn,

Taking photographs in these same places ..

 

To what if these spinnings are merely vapor,

They are to me, my complex. The question abridged

Is this, to pacify the mind’s fears of the mind’s fate.

There – there! listen! hear the wars and cannon-shot,

The quiet dagger spilt into a back, or that pistol fired,

Pumice-lidded eyes and crowny smiles, unsuspecting.

Terrible is the chorus posthumous, 

Peaceful are the sorrows of the survivors with whom rest

Still more years to study. Still I find myself edging closer:

In water, there! lies the wintered answer I now muse upon.

Something in the way we might be one.