Extrospection
____________________________________

Because of everything we desire & therefore project,
& everything we dread & therefore hallucinate;

because of what used to be present, but is present no longer,
though everyone yet navigates around it,
& what is not present now, but might one day become so,
though it already exerts gravity,
casting shadows that shoulder other shadows aside—

because of this crowd, one might assume
there wouldn’t be much room left
for anything else at all;

but if you herded onto the drive-in movie screen of the sky
everyone’s phantasms, figments, eidolons, mirages, & chimera,

together, they would form merely
a kind of languidly teeming smudge right there above the horizon,
not precisely at two o’clock, but just a little to the left,
depending on where you stand.

 

From Leap by Claire Bateman

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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