J. Zimmerman

DNA

A barmaid turns back into a keg, hops, a field of barley.

A miller turns into poppies by the wheat field’s edge, the white water of the millrace, the stillness of the flat pond upstream poised as the possibility of accident.

This house becomes a tiny seed of the coast redwood becomes fog.

The burning woodstove becomes an oak grove, a sickle, a circle of stone.

This string of light becomes fireflies flaring in a soft June evening while a girl tries to catch them, becomes the car wreck that killed her, becomes her mother’s fingers, toes, hands, feet, arms, legs turning numb in three days, foundering her, tall-ship becalmed, galleon aground on the shoals.

The shepherd becomes the lamb, which becomes Jesus becomes Adam becomes dust.

The police siren becomes a fire siren becomes the Coit Tower, becomes the penis of a Scotsman with its prize blue ribbon beneath his kilt, becomes a maypole.

Becomes the jet-black Shiva rock at seventeen thousand feet as you start to ascend Dolma Pass on the pilgrimage around holy Kailas, becomes bowing to the man-sized stone tied with prayer flags, its great head bare.

Becomes the birth canal of rock they challenge you to enter, becomes your hips slimmed by walking through Nepal and the Himalayas up into Tibet, so you wriggle in and through, exit head down, birthed, kneeling, kissing the ground

dust motes
our endless universe
stars