Pixels

Each small thing he examines, every microdot
in the computer's blown-up photograph
of rose petals, thumbnails, many portions
of wide and narrow letters (without a microscope
to take him further in)
blurs and fades to white or gray or dark
from which, at last, he pulls his eyes away,
blinking and tearing. It's then he understands why
before Galileo
the world seemed details that mysteriously
formed out of the void, and the void to elements:
from air, the cedar branch
drifting over Huan Valley; from fire,
iron parapets and sibyl's smoke; from water
the wondrous scales of many fish; and from the earth,
green meadows running on and on
until stopped by forest. He taps some keys
and the picture shrinks, resolves itself
into the small scene that he started with,
the woman pressing a flower in between torn pages
of a book so thin it must be poetry.

Copyright © 2009 Dick Allen All rights reserved
from Present Vanishing
Sarabande Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission