:::::::::::::::::::::::::CAMILLE MARTIN

why a memory of birds
flying into a cloud keeps
morphing outside
all the history books,
pastel maps of
successive conquerings
tiny rooms away.
what birds remember
of natural features, shifting
plots and hidden perches
with clear views. why
a photograph makes what
happens impossible
in the increasing fogginess
of dna, while one’s
heart keeps beating
a notion of
species in the mind, pictures
of a grand theory of animal forever
one guess behind.
could it be a momentary
lapse during
a holiday on a mythological
crater’s rim,
ripples of shadows in
the cold concave sweet
in the abstract. if
it were the slipperiness of
grammar in a box
of solved puzzles, connectives of
mountain passes tempted
to be crossed.
whether the passes look away
once shepherds reach grasslands.

from “fabled hue”