I met a nice guy once
or twice
in a mirror,
and each time, he
silently reminded me—
how we
can usually see
all kinds of things
a whole lot more easily
than we can ever
repeat them
back to anyone else listening.
It sounds funny, doesn't it?—
to cause a child,
to create
a fire—
when neither one of those
was our invention.
Now, the only contraption
I can devise
to cleverly wheel myself
out of this alive
is this whirling, spitfire
torture rack sort of
thing—where words
are constantly
stretching
and shifting their meanings, but the
things in the world
keep on staying stubbornly,
stiffly,
exactly the same.
From there, it's a no-brainer
that I can never
successfully transform what's here
into what's
there anymore,
and it also
pretty neatly explains
how come,
even though
I might have used to think so,
an acorn—
in real life
never turns
into an actual,
physical—stalk of
that corn.
