As If Waiting to be Set: the Whirling Lost Objects, in Space
There is a Formica dinette in the East River
Manhattan
Sitting upright
As if waiting to be
Set.
Right off 16th Street.
But carry me to the logic
Of the table: it is the compass
Whether it is square, or round, or oblong
Or patterned with fake pearl or wild mica bits
Making it here, everywhere, like
Flattened sheared gem.
Set the hands, like the long ends of mustache
Working their way all over the table-clock
Clock, celebrating the earth-and-ground-glory of the train:
The locomotive the steam engine headed anywhere to the
Railmen’s tune: Greenwich Mean Time.
All the train-men always checking their watches; they’ve
Systemized the world. Dinner’s on time, so’s surly breakfast,
So’s travel.
Forget the sun making its dimple biscuit somewhere or
The moon larding us with its cold-plate oyster-cream;
Pity the sun and
Moon, they’re the whirled or whirling lost objects
In space.
We have math, we have time.
Oh, we had time.
Objects
Body Of Water
About the Artist
Rebecca Pyle graduated from the university beloved by the Wizard of Oz, the University of Kansas, where she very long ago won the Edna Osborne Whitcombe, Edgar Wolfe, and William Herbert Carruth writing awards: three first prizes. Thank you, Mr. Oz. Her work appears lately---as poetry, short stories, or paintings---in Constellations, Stoneboat, Wisconsin Review, New England Review, Hawai’i Review, Indian Review, and Raven Chronicles Journal, among others. Her art website is rebeccapyleartist.com; she lives in Salt Lake City, Utah---the Great Salt Lake visible, not too distant.