Alice Fulton
THE PIVOTAL KINGDOM
A head capsized the wild mechanism ofMay
and a body followed, casting off
its muddy husk.
I gazed at him from the raised walkway
of the excavation site,
through dust the color ofsuntan.
I wanted to stroke a thing so warmly
smooth, a uniform khaki, on bended knee.
I wouldn't mind touching hands
tensed round centuries
of hiatus in place ofvanished weapons.
His
motions tabled for millenniums,
he'd had a long word with the earth.
He'd lodged
in
its plutonic gut,
an emptiness trung with pulse. Like all mortals,
I have a nodding acquaintance
with the dark.
You know our slogan: keep it light.
The tiled tunnels beneath rivers, fallout
shelters, the undersides of bridges
where sunbeams slither
like lizards on adhesive toes
are good at holding
shadows. But shadows aren't hard
blackness as much as patterns
lit by lesser light.
Even our refrigerators are stuffed
with glow, like well-appointed homes.
Though it's no strain to visit the abandoned
mines beneath Detroit,
the transformers choked in power
lines under Manhattan's tailored granite,
I wouldn't want to lodge
in
the clay warrior's dense bed.
I'd miss the inner
city
of sensation so solid you'd swear it was
