Thoughts Kept in a High, Deep Lake

Each adventure, another
Bubble in your minor past,
Each block of concrete sheds dust

Without obscure allusions,
Abstract, aureate diction,
Or other clumsy displays

Of old lyric aesthetics.
Wait. Back to those concrete blocks,
Really more easy-to-hand

Cement bricks. They can crumble,
Since compacted dirt is all
They are. Packed dirt, compressed clay,

Orderly blocks of baked soil—
These things were and were useful,
Well before anyone scratched

Or pressed messages, concrete
Or abstract on them. Sequence,
What sequences bubbles make.

The highest abstraction, say,
Ritualized, symbolic
Deep cave signification

Precedes the humble baked brick,
And commodification
Precedes, perhaps, the epic,

And then you look back across
The dust and the flood and see
The bubbles being swallowed,

And the whole scene lineless field,
No, not even quantum field.
The whole one choppy surface.