Poetry, by Jane Miller

Invited onto the grounds of the god,

who decides what words mean,

we are amazed at the world

perfect at last. Gold fish, gold finches, gold

watches,

trash blasted into crystal, all

twilights supporting one final sunset

with slender fingers of consolation.

A little reality goes a long way,

far off in the distance the weak sea

beaches its blue whales, the small sky

melds the stars into one

serious fire, burning eternally

out of control, our earth.

But here we are visiting

the plutonium factory dazzling

to the eye, the one good remaining

to us in our wisdom. We have concluded

that automatic, volcanic sunrises and sunsets

where light rips on the same cardboard vine

are blinding, and we would rather fail

painfully slowly than survive a copy

of the world perfect at last. Yet we are

impressed by the real thing, which we walk

like dew upon flesh, suddenly lubricated and

translucent

beyond our dreamiest desires, hard-pressed

to object. Consoled that there is so little

difference between the terrible and the real,

we admire the powerful appleseeds bobbing

in the dewy pools, we cannot help

but enjoy their greeny spring, and it is only by

resting

on the miraculous grass, wildly uniform, mildly

serene,

that we sense

with our secret selves, the little bit we left behind

and

remember, that we are out of our element, that we

are

being made into words even as we speak.

From “Memory at These Speeds: New & Selected Poems” by Jane Miller. (Copper Canyon Press: $15., 220 pp.). Copyright 1996 Reprinted by permission.