rejectomorph | Reset Forty-Two, Day Eight

Oh, the phone spam of Saturday, so early in the day, waking me yet again with the ringing that has come to sound like a jeer. Then there is the turning (age has eliminated tossing from my rumpled counterpane) and the covering of eyes to diminish the morning light, and the spinning hamster wheel of thoughts that only seem brilliant to my sleep-deprived mind. After an hour or two there is more sleep at last, but not much real rest. Finally waking to the declining day, the back yard fallen into shade, the heat still pooled in the stagnant air. July. Forgetfulness and exhaustion.

Another sandwich, some music videos, news as distressing as any day's, subsequently an escape into nostalgic fantasy, then the cooling air of night and the sound of the mockingbird singing and an occasional passerby on the bike path. Life here has settled into its summer routine, familiar but not comforting. I'm waiting for those grapes to ripen. The reality is unlikely to live up to the expectation, but I can imagine them brining some hint of redemption in their juicy sweetness. The disappointment lies in the future. The pleasure of the dream is now. I can live with that.

Sunday Verse

Difference

by Mark Doty

The jellyfish
float in the bay shallows
like schools of clouds,

a dozen identical — is it right
to call them creatures,
these elaborate sacks

of nothing? All they seem
is shape, and shifting,
and though a whole troop

of undulant cousins
go about their business
within a single wave's span,

every one does something unlike:
this one a balloon
open on both ends

but swollen to its full expanse,
this one a breathing heart,
this a pulsing flower.

This one a rolled condom,
or a plastic purse swallowing itself,
that one a Tiffany shade,

this a troubled parasol.
This submarine opera's
all subterfuge and disguise,

its plot a fabulous tangle
of hiding and recognition:
nothing but trope,

nothing but something
forming itself into figures
then refiguring,

sheer ectoplasm
recognizable only as the stuff
of metaphor. What can words do

but link what we know
to what we don't,
and so form a shape?

Which shrinks or swells,
configures or collapses, blooms
even as it is described

into some unlikely
marine chiffon:
a gown for Isadora?

Nothing but style.
What binds
one shape to another

also sets them apart
— but what's lovelier
than the shapeshifting

transparence of like and as:
clear, undulant words?
We look at alien grace,

unfettered
by any determined form,
and we say: balloon, flower,

heart, condom, opera,
lampshade, parasol, ballet.
Hear how the mouth,

so full
of longing for the world,
changes its shape?