it happens unseen
by day the redtail
by night the gray rat
language, like physics,
is multi-dimensional…
the world we know is
already ending
flat screens and paper take
on depth with language
the alphabet reaches back to
Phoenicia… the world to
come is already beginning
lizards become birds…
birds may become dragons
there was once a soggy shore
that was neither land nor sea
it hummed with life… it was
silent with life… sea and land
lake and shore, river and bank
all was ebb and flow… tidal
murk and the ambiguity of flux
then came the logos… wetland
a contradiction in terms, an
affront to reason, to man, to god
useless and without profit, wet
like a mouth, vaginal, fecund,
uterine, needing to be drained,
entombed and forgotten
—
Joseph Bocchicchio is a poet whose work has appeared in Cutthroat, Entropy, Panning for Poems, Jawbone, Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Ovunque Siamo, Voices in Italian Americana, and three Edith Chase Symposium Chapbooks: Resurrection River Poems, Rewilding Ohio, and Cuyahoga River Poems. His story, Passing Through, was included in The Healer’s Burden: Stories and Poems of Professional Grief, and was nominated for a Pushcart by The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.
