waiting for water to boil

while waiting for the water to boil

I feel I am caught between worlds

my claim to either held in opposing hands

before, with joy, I start to follow

the peregrinations of a tiny ant

the colour of human ash

an inspirited speck of dust

along the marbled Laminex countertop –

it climbs into an empty tea light

perches on the now useless wick

like a statue on a decommissioned plinth

and is still, perhaps dead –

what takes place then is a series

of computations, ant-like imperatives –

soon I am in our vast courtyard

holding the polished casing to the sun

with a yawning eye and another tightly shut

as if to set a hidden message loose

as if to quantify the value of a jewel

as if to blind myself with hubris

seen or unseen, I conduct

the ant in the tea light through

our garden on the edge of some firewood

that’s rotten, half-liquefied like good meat –

the concrete wafers piled atop the clay

like sheafs of scribbled paper

the lilies and the cobwebbed terracotta

paver stacks – viral pinnates

ellipses full of caterpillar holes –

the bed the Mexicans left that night

of sucked-out lemon wedges –

brazen scuptures – old ovens

gas hose shisha pipes – witches’ hat

formations like albatross skeins

the swimming pool brimming

with plastic blue butterflies –

the terraqueous old aviary

origins unknown, and its cuttle-

-bone ramparts and abandonment

of space to time

of zenith to nadir

of deferent sense to senses

broken or inadequate –

          I am trying to smell sound –

the palm fronds, sharp as Japanese knives

sharpened and not blunted by decay –

the pilling on the bedspreads on the couches

arced around the old MDF table – pilling

so long and thin as to look man (or madman) made –

at I last I come to the hunk of Binchō-tan

left by a hang drum player from Minabe

that sits atop a milk crate/surfboard bench –

the faint chime it emits as I tap it with the firewood

ceases when the wood crumbles to nothing

         

             and, wick-down, the tea light falls

             at a lag, like water –

the water on the stove has boiled out

empty pot smoking, flames high

and greenish – they lick around and burn

the cheap steel sides – droplets cling

like egg sacs to the range hood.