.
Irish mannequin in store window during Mardi Gras, New Orleans, Louisiana: photo by Carol M. Highsmith, January 2008 (Library of Congress)
No one asked me where I wanted to be born
said the store window mannequin, but if they had,
I'd have preferred almost anywhere to this festival
of false delights, where the distance between wishes
and dreams is equal to the distance between
promises and lies. That is, it doesn't exist. The deer
do not come down to the water to utter
their spontaneous cries. There's nothing here but concrete.
The deer are legitimately terrified. I too
am terrified. Morning in the canyon, then again night
in the canyon. The gap grows ever more wide
the way the light falls
on a diagonal, the night in its radial aspect
defying meditation. A moon rose in the mind and each thing there
picked up its radial aspect in the night.
Sometime in another other
wise completely ordinary
random century.
Slot Canyons, Page. Arizona: photo by Carol M. Highsmith, May 2009 (Library of Congress)