5 POEMS
Kelly Krumrie
Scale is central to ecology. Does this move you? Is there a field in it? Insects shipped for release, a vacuum, a cabinet, monitored, seeds gathered, your clipboard. I think of grassland remediation dust storms and lists of qualities for each blade’s line polar to and across from an axis on which points are differentiated to fix each other, to line up. And when I see organized, when the clouds cease, keep the sentence running. I look all night and loosen the particles with my very documentation. Each mark lifts one. What am I made up of, on average. Don’t look so mean. |
Physical objects become data once they have been used in research. There is a transition from a rock being just a rock to it now representing scientific knowledge. |
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Under controlled conditions, accumulation. An animal on the fence line uses its tail for balance. Each path formed in avalanche. When I look, I limit to one line.
What traces tell us something? What arithmetic? To use them, the grains must be sorted. To measure, name their shape, how many years of abrasion, and from what.
I time my walk to the stairwell. I overhear my neighbor.
Tech, evident, breath, door
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The dirt in the garden doesn’t count.
The size of my affection is variable, which quadrant it’d fall in. I hold as many hailstones in my cupped hand. If you’re at the window, what does it matter? I sink further into this posture. The peach tree has no leaves yet. I told you this. I took a picture. I kept typing questions. Each compartment of this study is numbered.
What insect would you choose to keep? Which dramatic view?
Curve, proximity, his, that
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Water is a different matter from air. Imagine more than one timeline. The particles in my hand aren’t waves but turbulence. And the wind, the wind’s energy transfers to the grains. I give you some.
I wonder about the differential. I wonder what place they’ll fall in. My worry stone on your table, my slick form in habit. Temperate formation, monolith, crossed axes in my hand, how many? Where are you? Sand grains in river water are transported or deposited. In motion, or at rest. My best look is altitude, is none at all. When these rocks settle, when the canyon slides, I’ll.
Tomorrow, the weather on your skin, your shower. This water’s lap is full of sediment.
Convection, irregularity, static, act
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Thermochromic glass calls for grains of certain shape. As always, equant. You told me their melt was stable, smooth like sound. In the field you stooped to measure with prismatic tools. The language of light filters is transferable: your little vial, your molten look.
Prism comes from sawdust but this is microplastic. Pitch washed among sea glasses.
Do we take the shape of our containers? Like water? The slope of land is no measure. A heat shimmer changes the image behind it, perception of these mountains refracted for a moment until cooled. Or darkened? The sun behind the back of my hand.
Ratio, abrasion, exhaust, jet
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— select bibliography:
Bak, Per. How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality. Springer Science+Business Media, 1996.
Beiser, Vince. The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization. Riverhead Books, 2018.
Briet, Suzanne. What is Documentation? Translated and edited by Ronald E. Day and Laurent Martinet, The Scarecrow Press, 2006.
Burwell, Jennifer. Quantum Language and the Migration of Scientific Concepts. MIT, 2018.