Kate Colby – Four Reflections

Kate Colby

Four Reflections

1 Claptrap reflections, or nothing lies the first time around. In binocular trafficking of pools in badlands shadow pinhole flats a lightning field of poles                          2 Rosetta stone of desert floor draws vapor clouds and mesas, cataracts of exile, where firmament meets figuration in tablature of erasure.              The golden calf melts into its reflection;              is this a genesis or third refraction? Coming down from the mount, Moses cups water in his hands. He sees the people in it.                          3 Reflections as aphasia, where distortion parts seas. A hothouse of cell walls distended with chlorophyll, unconsummated, these dead- ended intentions. And this light like fireflies battering cupped hands. Pinholes of tiny eclipses.                          4 Your letters read like crop circles in a boundless field of green. Or, on a glassy sea a ship runs into a rock. The sky a boundless blue screen, flickering, these intonations of immortality. And our skin crawls with mites, which we brush off in favor of; such that, peering over the edge, the mirroring sea becomes us.

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