Against all our living

Operculum

It’s always the small things that trip us up,
an undipped heel, a ten-cent relay, the
bird on the runway. Against all our living,
wrought ironies ply their black twists in
what only luck and dreams can embrace.

There was a girl once, tall and young,
and she brought me a piece of myself
I knew existed, but had never encountered.

It was a small thing, like an adornment
one adds for grace or accent, but it was,
nevertheless, essential. That part of me
is who I am in her presence, because she
could see between the spaces in my atömli,
the vast stretches spread through my local
cluster that bleed off the body into bands
of broad emptiness and necessary light.



I watched a boy being fed in a restaurant.
He was about twelve and sat crooked
in his wheelchair. Spoon after slow spoon,
his hunger was dispatched by the paternal
hand that brought him into this place.
Even the most withered of us need nutrient.

It’s the small things that come into play.
One unnoticeable detail after another
missed or disregarded, stepped over
as an ant trudges across the spider’s
trapdoor, never seeing the thin veiled
threshold that leads the last way home.

Joseph Gallo
March 24, 2008