The Path from Here to There
Out All Day
John Donlan
Finger-combing deerfly carcasses
out of what’s left of my hair
I puzzle over my most minute machinery,
the “cascade of chemical reactions,”
proteins, electric snakes bunched,
their branched and folded chains
like overtwisted flex cord, flickering
with life, without thought, without intention.
The path from there to here
has too many connections, overwhelms,
as when a widower, hearing his wife’s name,
weeps.
Dragonflies hover and dart like gunships
and I scratch my head, and the pond’s
lacy scrim of lilypads might map the molecule
of happiness, thirty thousand atoms long.
July 24, 2009
I like poems with a macro/micro focus (that's how I think of it anyway), but I'm not sure this one completely succeeds with its nearly-complete extreme closeup view. For me the hangup is mostly in the first line. Why are you combing dead bugs out of your hair?
John Donlan
Finger-combing deerfly carcasses
out of what’s left of my hair
I puzzle over my most minute machinery,
the “cascade of chemical reactions,”
proteins, electric snakes bunched,
their branched and folded chains
like overtwisted flex cord, flickering
with life, without thought, without intention.
The path from there to here
has too many connections, overwhelms,
as when a widower, hearing his wife’s name,
weeps.
Dragonflies hover and dart like gunships
and I scratch my head, and the pond’s
lacy scrim of lilypads might map the molecule
of happiness, thirty thousand atoms long.
July 24, 2009
I like poems with a macro/micro focus (that's how I think of it anyway), but I'm not sure this one completely succeeds with its nearly-complete extreme closeup view. For me the hangup is mostly in the first line. Why are you combing dead bugs out of your hair?