Paucity of Thought and the Consciousness of Lower Species
Leonie Mikele
Kneel. Shut your eyes. What’s lost
bounces back. Thickens to a rock.
If you’re lucky
if you think
you’re human. Silicon-oxygen
in tetrahedra--
a church laid out in space, for instance--
quartz out of so much paper. Bet a blue jay brain
it’s simple. Design.
The engineers of real
malign
the half-remembered, third-recalled,
not-yet-postulated, dismember
what ricochets out of time….
Stick to steps and line.
But to real-ize is to abstract a sum
from disparate wings—
a feather here, claw, air sacs, beak.
When it veers above you—not hard.
But difficult. Thought. Ethereal
as a Lyceum of Flight for birds is—
liquid as pouring concrete
is, boxing with administrators,
is, making numbers meet is.
It’s a bird bath.
Viscous thought.
Even if all you’ve got’s
one graphite stub, one T-square nicked on all edges,
a degree in landings where tough and disenfranchised
are the names of the tempo we live in—
even.
Here, in glory of all its parts
is: lungs, air sacs, bones of
laces, pin feathers, mandibles,
crops, culverts, claws,
flights…
miasmas of brain--stores, counts,
seeds in places, scoring
oratorios, programs
of parts, reckoning air
in inches, feathers
locked
from branch
to branch.
To make it to human—
you have to win some race. The prize
is to measure
girth and weight. A brain. Then. Fathom
a yard--
its yews, graves. Skeletons
of timbers, mortar tucked, cairns of stones.
Metal. Poured, cooled, beaten, dragged,
steadied, hoisted, hinged,
flown apart.
Emptiness.
For thieves.
The sting. The fever. The flood-ness of.
Light.
For pity. The robbers.
Skins. Eyes. Poor.
Absent wings.
Re-see a symbol, brain. See it.
It speaks barrier, brain.
Recall re-call as an act.
Frontier, perimeter, limit, stop. Knowing, knowing, periphery, stop.
Do you recall
it was glass.