Mantid

Below the water table

even when the ground seems still

waves

in frequencies so long the graph bar

flattens

curve between the colored-taffy strata

Further toward the surface in my tiny flat

with the high ceiling a stretch

goes through the things

breathing

molecules of moisture

with a tinny crackle

into the chair leg the floor

Even windless

nights are apt to stripe the asphalt with

the faring-forward sizzle of the cars taking people

fast

out of the shouting houses

creating airwaves that gaily

tighten the clasp of rage

upon the steering wheel

and whisper

the joists of the building

These inferences of motion may have made

something like a small book

or slew of letters

slide to the floor

(an article or pamphlet

for no reason now except the stacks of things

had been on edge so long

(a sheaf of notes

near the edge of the shelf

(a scrolled up magazine soft with humidity

but none of these

none

would have fallen

in the window

From the first vaguely woody

vaguely raglike bump

I knew it was something to deal with

very probably alive

and despite the want of scurry or flight that

its nature was to move

It turns out its nature was to freeze

As close to it as I dared

(no way to tell it from the floor

except for its being rough

like bark

or very slightly underlighted

forearms like serrated sticks

slow as

the battens in dead flags

hung from a pediment

swung above the long

oval swab of the abdomen

significant

a female's

What drew her had she been

alerted by the hollow in her

metathorax to

the swooping signal of a bat

to make her take that strange evasive

corkscrew dive into

my bedroom

and was she now relieved...

She made a sound like an old leaf

dragging across cement

her tiny heart-shaped head

like a dull jewel on a hinge

that during mating would turn toward

her smaller partner

with open jaw

(even brainless the male's

operative parts

still go

after which the female

finishes

the body

Was she now I wondered

sated

heavy with egg

or so disoriented by desire she crawled toward any light

which might seem like reflection up from water

against whose dancing skin

wings even the small birds'

beaks

could be detected

Here she came articulating toward the light

I had stood on the bed

backing away

I must have looked cloudy

my arms like logs

There was no way

because the creature could not

push the crumpled water up ahead like the poet's

apparition of unrejoiced reply

or force the underbrush

because she could not

fly because she could not

turn herself

or change in time

except down the generations

There was no way

in this little place with the tall ceiling

in my state at the time

in which daydreaming with a black stare

harrowed

the furrows of the silence toward

one distant figure

on maneuvers

who had run into a fondness for refusal

along with all the pause and paradox that

like a damper pedal

pressed

the long decay of sound of delicate

diatonic hum elapsing

through an overcast of near-notes

into a present ghost...

There was for us I say no way

to end this encounter

well