Constancy is an evolution of one's living quarters into
a thought: a continuation of a parallelogram or a rectangle
by means--as Clausewitz would have put it--
of the voice and, ultimately, the gray matter.
Ah, shrunken to the size of a brain-cell parlor
with a lampshade, an armoire in the "Slavic
Glory" fashion, four studded chairs, a sofa, a bed,
a bedside table with little medicine bottles left there standing like
a kremlin or, better yet, Manhattan.
To die, to abandon a family, to go away for good,
to change hemispheres, to let new ovals
be painted into the square--the more
volubly will the gray cell insist
on its actual measurements, demanding
daily sacrifice from the new locale,
from the furniture, from the silhouette in a yellow
dress; in the end--from your very self.
A spider revels in shading especially the fifth corner.
Evolution is not a species'
adjustment to a new environment but one's memories'
triumph over reality, the ichthyosaurus pining
for the amoeba, the slack vertebrae of a train
thundering in the darkness, past
the mussel shells, tightly shut for the night, with their
spineless, soggy, pearl-shrouding contents.