Masada Naturalis

Originally published in the Owen Wister Review, Spring 2010

 

There is a wall of constellated stars,
a fortification built by strange pre-cosmic colonists.
It is like a perch coming upon
the hulking snapping turtle,
and he does not see the mountainous shadow
– indeed, he cannot see it; it is too massive.
He only sees the tortoise’ wiggling tongue,
but it is not to him a tongue:
it is a pink worm.
It is the deadly inability to know.

– BTN 12.02.09