Surprising

The womans hands rest upon her thighs, only

each is not a thigh but a dog-haunch

lifting a guardian muzzle. Three heads one trunk,

a Cerberus raised from potters coils,

a reminder that one can be simple, yet not ordinary.

Overhead, rent clouds sieve circles of light

on grey, a rippling ocean of spotlights, empty

but for the sheath of rays down-spilling.

No boat, no bird, no leaping cetacean. Only the

eye behind the lens, choosing. Elsewhere,

dancers unspool themselves, bodies kite-weights,

anchors to flung sinkers, cyclopean,

the day-scape accordion-folding into next-ness.

This, but not this only. We would be wise

to watch how its done, the sly shifting of shadow,

now a tree, now a bat, now a man,

an unearthed frieze, the small pick, the fine brush,

the outblown breath that returns with a startle.