A homely succulent two hands high
Whose taxonym I didn’t know, glowed
With excess light waves redirecting
From the surfaces of its glossy, waxy leaves.
Nothing could be much less extraordinary
Than an ugly houseplant in an old pot
On a side table cluttered with dead leaves.
But what a machine. There it sat, motionless
To my human eyes, but alive, seething
With photosynthesis, primed for defense
Against parasites, herbivores, dehydration,
And other maladies its ancestors survived.
And what a human thing to have done,
To have excerpted one plant from a system,
To have cultivated, transported, displayed,
And marketed it, to have bought it for cash
And repotted it, to have set it by a window,
A double-paned marvel of industrial design,
To have watered it diligently, to have sat
And stared at it, to have written this about it.
It wasn’t a plant alone or only but an orrery,
A table-top wonder, the tip of the carbon
Pencil inscribing a message about the world
From the world, back to the world no longer
Even attending to its own mail, questioning,
Always questioning the source. It was
That difference between the dancer
And the dance that supposedly could not be
Calculated, the denouement tying it all up,
A damn houseplant in a low sun in a city
At the edge of a poisonous lake left behind
When the great inland ocean that used to be
Here shrank. I imagined my ugly succulent
As a small underwater something floating
In the light of tens of thousands of winters
Gone, just under the surface near the shore.
All the changes demonstrated only changes
Make no actual difference. Ordinary remains
Ordinary—tabletop, wilderness, life, world.
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