WWW

In childhood, you thought that the world

could be had: consumed like cut-up melon.

Looking at the map curling up the classroom wall—

its gradient landmasses and oceans—

you thought, what sort of life

could be small enough to fit on paper?

You are dismayed by your inheritance:

this ripe, indehiscent stone wielding vast

and pneumatic promises.

Yet to learn of topographical pleasures,

like the word sentience pertaining to your own sentience,

you find no reason to trust this mass, which

splays open like liquid spills.

See how it melts to wax and then hardens back:

the farther you go the smaller you get.

You know this paper, this pepo rind, this

theatre orbited by prayers, planes, and wireless:

see rivers of alluvial feeling made spacious by liquid,

by a child tracing the body of the ocean in blue crayon.

As the moon wanes and waxes,

you search for places that lack ceremony, and find

rusting patinas that are rituals of the planet

and rituals of your own.

You will learn that things least consumable

live on paper. In fact, it is the wide world that spins, not you.