Snippets of Solie

That day I’d walked the beach,

picking up shells, their spirals of Archimedes and logarithmic
spirals, principle of proportional similarity that protects
the creature and makes it beautiful. Sandpipers materialized
through tears the wind made, chasing fringes of the rising tide.
At first there were two, then three appeared, but when I began
to pay attention I realized they were everywhere.

And

The perspective is unfamiliar.
We hadn’t looked back, driving in,
and lingered too long
at the viewpoint. It was a prime-of-life
experience. Many things we know
by their effects: void in the rock
that the river may advance, void
in the river that the fish may advance,
helicopter in the canyon
like a fly in a jar, a mote in the eye,
a wandering cause.

And

Our culture is best described as heroic.
Courageous in self-promotion, noble
in the circulation of others’ disgrace,

its preoccupation with death in a context of immortal glory
truly epic, and the task becomes to keep
the particulars in motion

lest they settle into categories whose opera
is bad infinity.