A horse hair falls into the water and grows into an eel.

Even Aristotle believed that frogs

formed from mud,

that mice sprouted like seedlings in the damp hay.

 

I used to believe the world spoke

in code. I lay awake

and tried to parse the flashes of the streetlight-

obscured, revealed,

obscured by the wind-sprung tree.

Stranded with you at the Ferris wheel's apogee

I learned the physics

of desire-fixed at the center,

it spins and goes nowhere.

 

Pliny described eight-foot lobsters

sunning themselves

on the banks of the Ganges. The cuckoo devouring

its foster mother. Bees alighting

on Plato's young lips.

 

In the Andes, a lake disappears overnight, sucked

through cracks in the earth.

How can I explain

the sunlight stippling your face in the early morning?

 

Why not believe that the eye throws its own light,

that seeing illuminates

the world?

On the moon,

astronaut David Scott drops a hammer and a falcon feather,

and we learn nothing

we didn't already know.