print previewback STEVE SCAFIDI
The Law
Unnoticed for over 600 years
in the sky the 39th clause
of the Magna Carta
in small letter-shaped clouds
floated and faded as
they were read aloud
“To no one will we sell,
to no one deny or delay right
or justice.” He wondered
at it all. In the orchard
in May he saw a hive
of bees spelling the whole
of the Declaration in the trees,
the fat queen being the dot
of the i where “We hold
these truths to be self-evident.”
He learned by reading
everything he saw. Rivers
moving slowly in the winter
toward a thaw. Like gold
in the straw. The myriad
faces of strangers. Waterfalls.
Self-taught, he read each
document as natural law.
Note: Other sightings of Atmospheric Logopedia (A.L.) have been cited as early as the Sumerians, who describe a list of seven Mesopotamian kings in “cloud-words” that floated over Baghdad for a month until Hammurabi III died and was succeeded by his son. In Luke 43:19–21, it says: “Then Paul said to the assembled ‘Verily it is written in the heavens that “He is risen.”’” Johannes Kepler decided it was probably star matter “stirred by an intelligent wind.” Niels Bohr considered the three-day presence of the word “ALBUMEN” over London in 1923 (see: the London Times, July 9th, 1923) as atmospheric reactions to anomalies of air pressure. The Magna Carta was first written in 1215 and set the course for a Western idea of liberty and the relation of government to the governed.