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Silverfish
Walden splits in two in my hands—
white flakes of gone bindery,
leaf litter or lumps of snow,
and it's summer, not fall or winter,
too early for the turnings we await,
the sky's glamorous face,
ice bending the trees . . .
I read of ducks sitting in the middle
of the pond to avoid the hunter
when something flashes, slips past,
undulating across the desktop,
snaking through reeds of pencils and pens
to wait at the edge of metal shore,
a pikeman in coelacanth form.
What would the woodland hermit say
of the idea and shape, the likeness
that comes by chance? Imagination
uncoils from the spine of a book,
as in the woods, reading late into night,
he saw soldier ants resurface at will,
clashing in the margins of Troy.
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