Timothy Donnelly

The Material World

The properties, the causes, the evidence, the aromas.

     What wafted up off the forest floor and what glues itself

together by chance. What roots midair. What stops midsentence!

     fills the dank gymnasium stair when management props

open the door in the heat with a trash bin. Tree bark, leaf mold, the oils

     off fallen needles. Certain mushrooms send light signals

the way scorpions and jellyfish do. An eerie green glow

     attractive to arthropods, whose visits hasten spore dispersal.

I know this for a fact: the alternating white and black

     rings on a ring-tailed lemur’s tail, thirteen of each, are there

on purpose. Night’s overcoat of messages. What cakes up the intake

     valves and sputtering. What fights against its automation

briefly, like a planet. Daylight caught in the baleen of its pixels.

     Skeins of code, suspension cables. What feels the bridge

seaming when it walks it. A walk in the plural. The placedness of

     everything repeated. The stark markings help them to communicate

through their vanishing habitat, where flood tides of merchandise

     mesmerize the workforce, who can’t make out what danger

they’re electing. Omens come in three. Three or more lemurs make

     a conspiracy. To conspire is to breathe with. A pattern strikes the eye.

Nathan Dixon