ALLAN PETERSON

Self Knowledge

I am the dustmite living on skin, dancing through dinner
in a cellular snow, ungainly, though inviting.

I am the alias awaiting my real name, while four English ducks.
French ducks, Mallards, dally on one leg.

I live where winter's a week, so a whole year can be crowded
with hard apples and sit hundreds of hours steaming in our chairs.

I am mapping nerves in a harp and guitar, and graphing the shattered
glass wings of diptera. One day of sixties and worms return butterflies.

I am romance as the latinate binomials gather, Archangelo Corelli,
Bombyx Mori. I know some silken lives are a minute.

Every room with a mirror has two of me. I forget others pass through
the chrome, the hot window to the little Hell of the toaster oven.

I am entirely native. I have no stories of war in the capital, tanks
against a frog. My language is beautiful and pathetic, like all of us.  

   Contributor’s notes
   Disposing of the Body
   Of Course
   Ordinarily

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