Occasionally the Field of Possibilities
1
Is branch-spined,
a folded-leaf feeder,
a spatial array
of buckeye larvae,
snapdragons pulling
a pollinator-cue,
orange prolegs
telegraphing mirror-
image eyespots,
a macula lutea sun.
2
Is disruptive coloration,
yellow concentric rings
around a single eye,
a fovea centralis
of seed cones & pollen cones,
closely packed juniper seeds,
a Polyphemus moth with
urticating bristles & needles
with fine stomata lines, a nexus
of cone axis & host pine.
3
Is a field of 30,000 ommatidia,
a composite eye
eyeing woodruff & pale persicaria,
ten conspicuous eyespots
bisecting summer & pupation,
the line severing dusk & night,
the night flying hawkmoths,
is tapetal-mirrored,
a reflective tracheal network,
a superpositional glow.
4
Is a coevolved canopy
of wing scale & leaf,
a broadband acoustic cloak
deflecting echo & foe,
wavelengths of powder & light,
a cloud of stacked platelets,
a thin-film percussion,
hair-penciled & interlinear,
sparkling archaic sun moths,
a microlepidopterous register.
5
Is night-active & pupillary,
wing-fringe grazing cornea,
small moth repetitions
in an orbit of sequestration notes,
thick scale vestiture,
glassy, bluegrass-hosted,
rain-impermeable with snow-
veined forewings, a loop
of sequestration notes,
a small moth repetition.
6
Is a current of candles & dawn
half a clockface ago,
a Yablochkovian glow
of carbon-arcing waxwings,
match twigs, linstock boughs,
a sky of combustible fruit
tinders river of ruined craters,
winter on its last legs,
a winter of monthlessness,
winter with plants in the belly.
7
Is a complicity
of ruckus & pinion,
is the pollen grain music
of a microstructure of modified hairs,
light-interfering wings,
sight-singing by structural coloration,
a scalic descent
down a microscopic edifice
of struts & holes, wings close
& the moth composes.
___________________________
The Principle of Rapid Peering
Sylvia Legris
New Directions, 2024
Sylvia Legris lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
