Joanie Mackowski

Confusion

 

We ease into the ooze. After spinning ourselves

in circles, our names spiral in our skulls like 

buzzards over the fields: we hope they don't 

 

find us and tear us apart! Was it all those years 

driving north in the southbound lane, years blurred 

from drams of pinks and blues to quiet 

 

the highest waves of our inner Pacific? Back 

when darkness perched on the face, before 

the firmament bloomed a fermata, the first 

 

isolated ah-ha, we eased into our original urge:

a beakful of green sprig; a true equilibrium, 

"perfect internal disorder"; our anonymous and 

 

numinous threshold of repose. We'd prefer

it continue forever: we'd empty that old ocean 

of ratiocination, always measuring how many 

 

times it contained the Other, always buttressing 

another lighthouse. Our vision is fusion: a ferry between 

two reasonable ecstasies; a baptism in primordial 

 

brine; a coupling. O, how we love such effervescent

panic, this Copernicus who unmoors us from 

our regal center, making planets, satellites, and now

 

slide across the vast like coins on a dashboard!