like the shuttlecock at apogee or hummingbird still there like the red dragonfly painted upon invisible air like the granite mass that peaks above a cloud or midwinter fountain in perpetual fall like the Earth we walk upon or very nearly like that

the black swallowtail
cannot settle upon one—
ten thousand flowers

like the girl reclining on plain air above that stage where a magician steps now to the curtain now to the proscenium's edge

First published in Kokako 9 (September 2008)