Is About:

            with half-hearted apologies to Ginsberg, Yeats, and Rosen

The infant is about trading a body
of water for land,
club footed, black-eyed, blue toed,
a deuce in the hand
and an ace in the hole,
mad as the mist and snow.
The hand
is about Michelangelo.
The candle is about eating your curds
to find your way. Faith
is about needles and hay. Gymnastics is about
sticking it. Poe is about getting up
to answer the door. Déjà vu is about saline
seeping into the boat. Fear is about fava beans
and a nice chianti subverting the form
of the jungle snake.
Nature is about secrets, coves, sub
species, megaphones, healing balms,
and dispassionate devastations.
War
is about nature.
The womb is about aestivation.
Vice is about stalling for time.
The toddler is about knowing
the world by cramming everything
into the mouth. Youth
is about spitting it out.
Passion is about death-
defying concentration.
Hopkins is about dragonflies.
The sage is about the mountain.
The spine is about bearing weight.
Old age is about bones.
The brain is about the size of the hand-
held blank slate. Dylan is about
you deciding
what the song is all about.
Beethoven is about scent.
Baudelaire is about the throat.
Death is about the intimacy
of distance, the rowing of the glass boat,
secret coves, and dispassionate
devastations

mad as the mist and snow.

(the "next" paddle will take you to another poem by this author)