As in Nowhere, No-One
       

Blue eyes of horses: only occasional, and sightless-
looking, the pale revealing the pupil, fixated
peripherally. Focus, one might say, requires a center,
a straight-ahead. One might think of the prow of a ship.
Below deck, the ocean's entirety presses inward,
the hull remains a sturdy arch, spans
against an infinite weight. You look out the porthole — if
the view is not blue, or green, it is black. You might go back,
then, to thinking about the barn.
                                                        Maples turn red without us,
drop leaves that are gathered by nesting squirrels.
"Invisible invisible invisible"
Brown eye: continental slope; the coming of depth. The neither
here nor there, the muzzle so unlike the aqueous slicing
of movement through water, of water through the living.
The whuffling, dawn hours and the smell of straw
become ancient history. Your life: a liner. This is not
the thought that counts. Half-water, half-nail, all salt
on the tongue and in the Pacific, as nutrient and body
seen only in distorted reflections.
                                                        How to ride the animal
through both hay and seagrass, into the shape
of a hyphen: don't think too hard about the culinary.
In falling, everything tastes like tannic wind. Leap
over the railing, shove the vertigo into reverse. Swim
towards the bottom. Away from the air.

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Copyright © 2020 Kimberly Quiogue Andrews All rights reserved
from A Brief History of Fruit
University of Akron Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission