An Experimental Apparatus
Say something simple –
the marsh grass grows brittle –
and already the past leans forward
and the way ahead is choked.
Here’s where you turn back
but then circle, pull round
and paddle again, pressing
ahead a small way. You wish
for strength. You wish
to retreat, but you have chosen
this one place on earth with no one
but a heron lifting twenty feet
ahead and life forms you don’t
understand beneath you. No doubt
your fear is persuasive. There is
a leaf, a cloud. There is time
to consider vectors such as
danger. This is not that time.
This is a mass of lily pad,
of duck wing, of dragonfly
and the creatures’ careless
distribution of seed. Consider
the part where fall grasses dance
in their skins and the future,
as the future ever does, begs
the past for comfort and goes on
freely, with or without
strength. Or hope.
Judith Chalmer is the author of two books of poetry, most recently, Minnow (Kelsay Books, 2020), as well as co-translator of two books of haiku and tanka. Read more.
“An Experimental Apparatus” appears in Minnow, Kelsay Books 2020. It was first published in Quiddity in 2014.