A cedarpine oldgrowth holed with huckleberry floats by in the current, glaciermelt frozen veins—
through Antarctic sheets, 28.9-atm upside-down rivers under, lone orange polymer jacket blowing free
among sleet-mixed snow, icecutter shipmetal shattered belowsea, only evidence the debris
sprouting after aeons among alpine scraggly trees rooting with pristine quartz sanding down
among dunegrass crawling, mirroring eelgrass, thriving schoolfish and mice alike yet opposite, mirrorborn everywhere.
Slag the world-memories, release chemical devourers to runoff in-way stone, unsuffocate gold
Id-not-Ego, long-past tyrian emerald iridescent ivory indigo — hue the rivers, throw putrescent oil
atop the fishbodies, still the hungry gators, make a soup, turn the ground to mucous-gelatin rot—
until only machines stalk. Laissez-faire cadmium machinepaint flakes into mud butterflies. Look
and feel the heat, the light, metal pourdown: blast-heat force, skin released. Gaping sun-maw: that radiant forge divine.
In time. Newgrowth riparian. Plastic children’s signs, polywood boardwalks sandpaper grippy —
ADA compliant, wheelchair-accessible, guided tours, flat, 1-mile loop, 3D spacemapped online.
Reclaimed, indigenous peoples consulted. Quiet. School walking fieldtrips, lunchbags trashed
in appropriate vesicles, pennies pocket-stayed, dry. Hands frog-careful-untouching; frog model
acrylic, safe, handoily, provenstance: don’t touch the frogs. Leave only bootprints. We can be gentle, but we must work for it.
We can coexist. We can. We can.
A long, languous stretch. Metal clatters to the ground, cointinny but heavy as laid-down-bare iron. Tiny anchors for tiny ships, those that sail us throughout the world. Click of teeth, stretch of lips. Sky reflected in the pupils, infinity in the black cosmos, barrier-membrane separating by hairsbreadth two universes. Infinities greeting each other.