Metaphoric Design
Nature voices concern in the screech of an owl under
boards of this huge shambled barn now ready for burning.
It is a shame, we all agree as we light the kindling,
consider the initial building, how even an architect may
have been consulted with his healthy fee for such a large
structure. While the labor involved must have bruised
many hands and the finances too were no small consideration.
Is there any indication of some grand schema in scrolls
found in the caves along ancient seas or under
Brother Jack’s typewriter table in Lowell, Massachusetts,
not to mention the Mandelbrot figures bloodily scratched
into the walls of mental hospitals by unknown
patient-artists? Perhaps it is a matter of recurring
cycles that sometimes don’t occur or a vibrating string
conducted by flame-haired God and strummed by
a cosmic wind. Would it matter to God or the wind
who or what took credit or played the encore? The stars
drift out among our eyes, ball bearings and a basaltic mantle
clear our secular vision as variety becomes the salt and
not the spice. Yes, I am sure there is another reality, even
as a “zero” postulates the number “one”. This lack of
congruency sways us, for we are simultaneously at
the center of some hot Saturday tub, and also in
cold umbral shadow of the moon, three dark fields away.
Richard Pflum has published two collections (A Dream of Salt
and A Strange Juxtaposition of Parts) and has recorded a CD (Strange
Requests). His poems have appeared in Conceit Magazine, Sparrow,
Event, Kayak, The Reaper, The Owe, Flying Island, The Hopewell Review, Ploplop,
The Indiana Experience and Bear Crossings. His most recent
chapbooks are The Haunted Refrigerator and Other Poems (Pudding House
Publications, 2007) and Listening With Others (The Muse Rules
Press, 2007).