

—
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Calder at the Top of the Stairs
If this is modernism
Why are you smiling?
Is it the light hanging
In nothing, ruby
Triangle turning, leaf
Or teardrop train or
Dreamshape you
Have never seen
Before turning
Answerably round the
Ruby triangle? Is
It the invisible
Unavoidable, as in they
Will turn, at a speed
Consulting nothing but the
Declarations of independence
Of air and gravity? Is
It their delicate
Armatures, wires of
Relation, family
Of place and force,
Cantilevers hiding
Tensions, weights,
Poise and counterpoise,
Sleights
And designs
Inviting the sacrilege
Of touch to test how
What hangs is hanging,
Feel, as Eden’s
Finger felt for
Heaven’s, patterns-made-solid
Hauling against and with
(Which gets you kicked
Out of the museum)?
Still smiling. Do you
Remember that
You, too, hang
Athwart and among
Circlers, wanderers, brilliants,
All the ellipses and rings –
Planets, blood
Cells jostling down
Vascular sluiceways, wacky-
Eyed fish, sycamore
Rookbursts, shockwaves
Flowering, comic
Domino of cause into
Effect, conga
Lines, timeframes,
Interorbits of planned
And unplanned – and
You, too, are
At play? Do
You smile because
A man started this but
His art lay in
Turning it loose, letting
Go self into everything,
A universe of sightless
Angels of influence at
Work, bulky, spinning
Pear of a planet, cross-
Pulling vector
Fields, writhing
Magma, currents that
Never stop, never? As if
Watch what happens now
Were his only theme? Turn:
This blue orb gestures to
That black rhomboid. Turn
Again: brand-new
Fingerposts in all
Dimensions? Do you
Smile to recognize
The marvel in this
Nameless moving? Isn’t
That predicament
Great? To live where
Known and
Unknowable, these
Shrapnels of
Joy, reshape the shape
We’re In? Drive
To the child at the
Center? You’re still
Smiling. Do you assent? Did
You ever think you would?
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Michael A. Griffith began writing poetry while recovering from a disability-causing injury. Three chapbooks: Bloodline (Soma Publishing), Exposed (Hidden Constellation Press), and New Paths to Eden (Kelsay Books). He lives near Princeton, NJ.
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