Flickering, 10 January 2018

Mere existence was never without mystery.
Whoever ever said that it was unmagical
Had grabbed the right end of the wrong
Complaint: mere existence could often be,
Often was, unsatisfying and always prone
To obsessive riffing through the tiniest shifts
In emphasis, the infinite variants of grains
Of sand, the ramifying diversity of snowflakes,
The waves each slightly differing while all so
Similar, yes. But not the same, no, however
Frustrating, and not unmagical, however
Unmagical. It was damned mysterious, destiny
Wearing its invisibility cloak of randomness,
That mereness of existence, the weirdness
Never quite caught in the weir of awareness,
Always managing to slip in, silvery, and through
Thought’s net. When the bare floor shone
With the glitter of a near disaster, when
The breaker flipped and the kitchen flickered,
When ordinary catastrophe was averted
Narrowly, or was never, there was at the core
Of the danger a mystery and at the core
Of that mystery a danger. I never once took
The subtle serpent of experience lightly.
Fate’s tapestries were all woven with a fang,
And the green thread through the shadows
At the center of the dull scenes shimmered.