In which flightless connotes something of injury, not mere disability;
In which mulberry speaks only of the fleshly aspirations of silk worms;
In which goat’s milk may also be strained and sullied and purified for silk;
In which the goat’s rectangular pupils may open out, their gaze panoramic;
In which the sweetness of a persimmon may be said to be the twin of deskwork;
In which the calm of dragonflies may be attributed to their three, six-way hookups;
In which rune means both poem and prayer, dashed stone and slashed symbol;
In which drawings mean everything they can be allowed to mean, and fail still;
In which words do no better; in which neither milk nor love mean what they meant;
In which silk is art or parachute; in which persimmons live and die by the wood;
In which I go from desk to trees and back, my life already six to thirty times longer
than the span of an aquatic insect’s; my flight time a drastic fraction, despite this;
In which even a purple fruit’s life is taken up with flying, by falling; in which
my falling is also my flying; in which all I want is falling, and all I fight;
In which flight is not metaphor; in which like flight is not simile;
In which goats outrun me and out-fly me, and always will.