nevertheless she went about her business
as if unseen and in a maze, in amazement
that anyone could possible read what she
wrote, what she skinned, what she thought
orthogonal enough to hide the pensive gnome.

eons passed, until one fine dark day the
wine-dark see and the golem’s sea sang-fed
each other swords drawn then sheathed in
parlay, their elemental particulars given to each
other and riven in rivulets of atoms and fleet

mucosal streams, thirteen thousand of which
made musical dreams of the figures passing
flittingly hither thither and yon on the vestal
scrim, kulintang gongs sounding deep and
shallow, weep and wallowing through mime,

time and the credulous whine of skeptical
canids, risible cooing of corvids in the night air
• rising, sealing, seething, stoking, sparking •
thought and latent obscurations as if no one
and everyone could parse, understand, ken.

and then, one deep bright evening the word
went out that, though she had taken the sere
oracle’s hand and led him back to the fleet awe
of dreaming, eras and episodes would rise, fall,
fail, flow, feel until all the world had spoken: this.