Objects speak to us they do
Printed matter obviously
But equally the soulful creatures
Animate and inanimate that banal binary
This blue pen for example
Not my favorite and related I know
To the aforementioned printed matter
Performing like a pen the duty of applying
Thin sheets of pigment to broader sheets
I went through a phase of experimentation
With the finest points I could find
Until I went too far
With this one too sharp and cutting
Too specialized for incision
To work on the rare occasion of emollience
But how about these glossy leaves
Bowing and rising under the heavy rain
Transmitting the southern sound
Of big raindrops’ portly ploosh
The big magnolia is cool whatever happens
Deeply rooted in the clay
And the bits of foliage designed to detach
Will allow themselves to fall
Some of them not all
If the wind gets too heavy
And the ground around the nearby pine
Wears a skirt of tangs willfully discarded
By ravenous and insouciant squirrels
Alert but confident in the tactics of evasion
And the gravid pine will sacrifice
Some or most of the fruit in her fecundity
And oh the superb microorganisms
Busy intermediaries of the living and the dead
For what we call life and death
Are but snapshot positions
In the infinite and articulate dance