6. On the Insularity of the Aesthetic Experience: The Useless Umbrella

Today we will find our art hand- and wind-tossed.

Outdoors, face up, in the rain.

Gray wash over a busted umbrella, red, by the road.

Because the world is possible, our choices are limitless.

A modern angst bootsole and spur, glossy toe and high heel.

Or say just heel and toe, there being just cause.

Just because is sufficient reason for the rain despite knowing.

News of ascendancy seen at the top of a tree in a storm.

Say an island tree, swaying at the edge of the wind.

And woods with spaces a boy might build a fort within.

Our philosophers switched on a lamp to study the dark.

Now he does the same but does not turn on the lamp.

Feeling for honesty sans the famous lantern.

Going upstairs at the celebrated moment without a sense of down.

Picture the umbrella, all ways at once.

Then inside-out in the wind, a new way of all together.

A parachute, a hot air balloon, a sail receiving the wind.

And just as quickly done with, crushed parabola in the weeds.

The pleasing carcass of a purpose flung overboard.

Ballast from a gale made of sense and nonsense.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Jan/Feb 2003
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