A Paul Klee Exhibit

Viewed in reverse chronological order

First his late trees:

blooms,

harlequin birds,

stems dissipating

into a purple cloud

or a head

all ballooned

on the strength

of having to be.

Not chaos, an array.

To become this

one has to unravel

from discernible life,

the fog and slow mania

permitted

"from each suggestion

of structure -a body

reclining on a limb perhaps

or a landscape

etched in hairline strokes,

each blade of grass, each tree, each cloud

alive to dismantlement.

Quarks, they say,

quiver with a secret charge,

the smallest there is

and yet, they build us,

their leaps of faith

bringing us

to our fundamental element,

forever poised

between the luck of birth

and the brightness

of what's hidden.