COLLOQUY
A frail, desolate wood
of twelve ring-years
once was host to insatiable builders
who carved and weaved their lives
within its hemisphere.
To those miniscule creatures
long ago disappeared,
The world was flat and had an edge.
A child's building block the insects chose
embossed with the number three--
forgotten token of a nomadic move,
unremembered tree.
Tiny music was made
gentle, blind, relentless score,
swelling to crescendo, heard no more:
The building of the years was
whittled in a hour, hollowed in a day.
A brittle wooden monument,
sepulcheric home of Stygian visions:
A prerogative of destiny
quiet copy of man's industry
unspoken colloquy.
July 04, l973
