Monday September 7, 1992

Ode to a piece of green stuff on the floor.
Why are you there? What are you for?
What did you used to be?
Maybe you were a piece of leaf.
Now all dead and dry.
Or were you a piece of curtain?
the the baby ripped onto the floor.
How about a giant
who sneezed?
and you are some of the sneeze?
Perhaps a piece of dinosaur brain.
hardened and petrified
like a piece of amber
with a fly inside

A curl, a lock of mermaid's hair.
Greeny-grey and blue stained by the sea.
Or a piece of gryphon's entrail
That was killed by an Ancient Greek Hero.
He wanted the magic, the power,
that came at the end of the quest.
An emerald, an olivine, shot out of a volcano
at super-sonic speed.
Flies up high into the sky
splashes down into the sea.
A piece of wallpaper who said,
"This wall is boring.
I want to hit the road."
The child who drew on the wall,
a pretty pictures of green crayon.
And the crayon flaked off over the years

But now where whill you go?
Will you disintegrate into molecules,
and atoms, quarks, and mesons?
Will you go spinning around and around and be drawn into another curl
of living energy?
I don't speak your language.