Then & Now

Small things he gave to pen
and illustrote at length.
Before an oak desk,
Atop a warm chair,
in the twenty-sixteenth year
of his own age
he skithered and slackered,
towards some She he’d found.

Those days swayed their fold,
and equinoxed to plant some seeds,
Between the legs of her he found,
a soul containing
so many rooms

but whose?

(then and later)

“It’s many things” he said once
“and places these are they such few.”
“It’s an orrerie…” she said.
and he wondered at those many things
she claimed to think or thought she knew

She looked into the mercurous mirrors.
Their clockery ticks and poisoned time;
a sun so central, electroplated,
and planets so magnifified.

He watched at once through spectacles
gold-plated as they were mirrored
oak-cast and brass-bound rimmed
Reflecting himself to himself,
just as colors to his thirsty ears.

She grew planets from her fingers
and worlds from many arms
and light erupted from her sway
and dark from many palms

She was everything it seemed
and her horizon called to grave
all those things he knew he knew
and swayed his folded days