a thing so small
the shapeliest mind
can't fix its density.
It’s the locus of conflict
between what we each think matters,
where intangible wave crashes
onto ephemeral beach.

Consensus says to let it seize you.
Inhale its ravishing colors,
travel its shifting latitudes.
When its random symmetries converge,
let the impact be manifest.
It is the hour of the name,
the chiral shapes of dark.

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Richard and I had been talking about a poem by Ellen Maybe called "What It's Like" when I first drafted "It's," which has been through many rewrites and comes out of my preoccupations with the communicative power of syntax alone without concrete nouns or stories, the mind's drive to create metaphor, and our fleeting moment of consciousness.