AS FAR AS I CAN TELL
A lidless idleness designed to mesmerize,
out of which hesitancy and reluctance
give way to calibrations minute but not
insignificant, day in, day out, rocked
by the tidal bed the shell it’s attached to
is attached to, complacent in its mantle
of unconscious soft tissue, it grows radially
as if from a sound wave’s central ping
or like a breath-fired ball of molten glass.
The irritant of particularity’s the seed
that starts the exacting earnest venture,
the salt inside consequent iridescence.
Author’s Bio
“As Far as I Can Tell” and “Kakapa Bay” are both included in CAROL MOLDAW’s new book of poems, Beauty Refracted, forthcoming from Four Way Books in the winter of 2018. Her most recent books are So Late, So Soon: New and Selected Poems and The Widening, a short novel.