Imago Mundi

inside the paperweight             bubbles,               one poised on the tip                  of a petal       from which it can never launch,     others are galaxies peppered here   & there round the pansy,           “thought,”           whose saffron streaks are neat as hand-         painted, floating like an untethered astronaut in         “the artifice of eternity,”                 while outside           midwinter snow sits     like bleakmindedness         until light rings, vivid as a pin,             grass spurts           & the field       becomes a razzle           of butterflies, sky         a field of sunflowers so vivid       it’s           invisible             as trout, the color of water,     a flash where water’s glass               bending           the world as tonight,       where the sky flowers             & stars give off scents,       drop bright fruit fish rise to,             taking in constellations,         & the moon turns     over flips in the lake’s shivering mirror, the same in all directions   so I enter quietly, steering           stars aside,         moving weightless as a bubble,               floating in eternity