Perfection: An Ars Poetica
First published in Solitary Plover #29, Winter 2019, page 6. Originally written in June of 2017 in a workshop led by Judith Skillman at BookTree in Kirkland, Washington. Rick Lupert converted this poem into a broadside for my 14 February 2023 online featured reading for Cobalt Poets. +
The archer fish knows refraction.
As it spits from its tropical mire
to shoot down crickets for dinner,
it adjusts for the kink in light—
the light that shifts direction
from water to air,
from the imposition of its world
to the world above, of heaven.
Is this a marvel of creation,
a piece of the grand design,
or an accident of evolution?
Or is this miracle simply gained
from the need to feed—
trial and error that perfects the poem?
