The plague wasn’t a static point in time,
but a predictor of other plagues, and
an echo of earlier ones.
Holocausts and genocides still happen,
a form and its shadow, and its shadow’s shadow.
Forward isn’t a direction that can be sustained.
Even the Sun – a formidable animal
in its gleaming meanness is a slave
to gravity’s momentum, an incessant
drone, a constant poem.
A tree’s ascent–seed drilling the sky
a dervish obeying the drum.
Life spirals, so we’ve been going
in circles this whole time.
There is no way out of these woods.
Exhibit A 