World of Glass
Birds do not look much like leaves
until fluttering leaves look, to me, like birds
because feathering is a metaphor.
Shearings are slivers trimmed from glass
and shearlings are sheep just shorn. The meaning
is in the action, not in the thing itself.
It’s the throwing of the stone. The chip
makes a waster or cullet, something flawed,
returned to potential, so different
than flight. To leaf is to layer
in gold. Pages are leafed through, and feather
meant flying before it became pen,
just as glass was sand before it was glass.
Sheets can be paper, or they can be glass.
An eye can be glass, can glass over, and plume
is the shape of smoke, of birds, as if etched
on air. When the atmosphere cracks,
glass is said to weep. No fleece, no feather or leaf,
no view through the fire and glaze. Flamework
gives shape to sand. The birds take their leave.
2020-12-05 22:55:25
2
0