Today is the verge
An edgewise day
A boundary zone
Yesterday into tomorrow
As if these hours don’t matter
Won’t add their minutes
To the sum of me
And us, to the total
Of what we’ve done
The slim silhouette of sundial
Shadow fixed in place, open
Angles on a timeless face
Science
Our questions sprout
Like brambles
Dense with unseen truths
Quivering and tense as rabbits
Flushed into the open
When spoken aloud
Darting across the tongue
A disturbance in the listener’s ear
That flees barely glimpsed
Back into conjecture
Understanding a footprint
Of what might have been alive
What tore its warmth free of thorns
And escaped into possibility
Leaving only the suggestion
Of what was hiding
Safe as a copse
As a thicket
Amid the sprawling undergrowth of science
Pricking with the need to be known
Feeling Loss
It might feel cold
Like the open ocean
Where cold rays
Cast their semen and eggs
Into vast seas
And do no pause to dwell
On species
Or the fate of genes
Or any other clutch
Of dry, reptilian lust
Chemical attractants
And the scrape of scale
Need coiled around instinct
Cold fusion
Where there is no heat
Or it might feel empty
Absence of weight and form
A floating motion
Without memory of soaring
Brief puff of spore
All conceivable futures
Condensed
Into a mote of dust
Arms closing around air
In blank embrace
Filled with empty memory
A boundless sigh
As the ghost of passion
Slips away
Upon the changing tide
Photos taken at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center
Transitions
Could it be considered
A kind of death
This melting of ice
This shape in a mold
Quickened by heat
Into liquid escape
Subject to weight
The fast run downhill
The settle and seep
And inevitable peril
Of dying again
As vaporous mist
Moist, like a breath
And betrayed
By the coming cold
Amphibious
The embryo flexes
Twirling in its clotted pearl
Of egg, clouds of spawn
Spattered across the bog
The pollywog nursery lined
With moss and leaves
Mud and silt, secluded pools
For the immature throng
Of grazers, minnow sleek
In mottled skin with bristle
Gills neatly tucked away
The whole world is water
Mouths full and ears full
As bones push into buds
Sprouting these legs
In an awkward unbecoming
The road to exile, maturity
Is always a breaking
Of surface, an intersection
Of amnion, water, and air
No ribs, no muscles
For the breath, only gulp
And inefficient heart
Subject to chill, blood
Flecked and flickering
Supplemented by supple
Skin, a tenuous tension
Of absorption and loss
The sustained refrain, air
Vibrating in humid heat
All their hungry songs afloat
Thrilling through their empty throats
These photos were taken January 1, 2004 at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, which was hosting a traveling exhibit called “Frogs: A Chorus of Colors”.
Rae Spencer 