Scan
Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:17 pm
I turn it over in my hands,
the inky A4 printout
of the ultrasound:
is that a leg or an arm?
I turn it upside down.
Is that a jawbone
or a jumping bean?
I look at the spine,
shaped like an interrobang,
and then, I grope for the whole:
a whorl of monochrome
denoting an incoming storm,
or a photo of Jupiter
taken by an early NASA probe.
Our own Enigma code.
I put it down and look
out at the late spring evening,
where the sky is wet and bulging
with thunderheads - ripe plums
on a perilously-laden bough -
overhanging hungering mountaintops.
Potbellied homunculus,
cupboard-Indian,
Echo's bones,
juju, astronaut,
inscrutable old seer,
lodged in your far-off cave:
what does the future hold?
You ought to know -
you're from there, after all.
the inky A4 printout
of the ultrasound:
is that a leg or an arm?
I turn it upside down.
Is that a jawbone
or a jumping bean?
I look at the spine,
shaped like an interrobang,
and then, I grope for the whole:
a whorl of monochrome
denoting an incoming storm,
or a photo of Jupiter
taken by an early NASA probe.
Our own Enigma code.
I put it down and look
out at the late spring evening,
where the sky is wet and bulging
with thunderheads - ripe plums
on a perilously-laden bough -
overhanging hungering mountaintops.
Potbellied homunculus,
cupboard-Indian,
Echo's bones,
juju, astronaut,
inscrutable old seer,
lodged in your far-off cave:
what does the future hold?
You ought to know -
you're from there, after all.
