and yet, you try. At first it sounds all wrong;
sonnets are for lips, eyes, vines. (Microchips
can’t kiss, tiny cameras can't pine.) The lines
jam up against each other: misfed reams,
machines performing duties skewing off
their programmed script. Tempted to rip it up,
discard it, post it on your blog, slog through
another draft, you cover up the sheet.
Repeat, rewrite. And yet. The light outside
the window shivers. From the page, a sound
of brown and green and twining. Drowned in heat.          
If you were to re-read, you'd see a glint
of silver surface quickly swallowed by
a bird. I've heard it hurts to see them fly.

__

These days everything seems poised to flower and take root, even the least organic parts of our lives. I don't know how well we're doing, navigating this strange intersection of flora and microchips, where the shadows keep getting harder to plumb. The tighter the constraint here, the better.