Sunday, November 23, 2014

A Shuffling of Layers

The longer I live, the more I realize that I’ve merely glimpsed into the layers of the natural world around me.  For this reason 
I was drawn to create a visual response to Dan's own thoughts about this concept in his poem "Layers."
                                                                                                                                                                     — Suzanne

"Layers"
 


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Layers
              In the spirit
             of E. O. Wilson  

A buried secret that I’ve
stumbled on below life’s
muzzy noisiness and
haste, distracted hours
of too-often-blustery
day:  there’s something
lurking silent under
every mundane layer,
waiting to arrest
the jaded eye . . .

                      I  watch
the thrasher picking
through the gravel
near our shed, wonder
what’s beneath the
thrasher’s layer?  I

        probe into its puffed

cream belly underneath
brown quills.  Find
one large beetle,
gleaming.  But now
I wonder

        what’s beneath

the beetle’s chitin
layer?  I’ve poked
beneath that layer
once before . . .
                         to light
upon the milk pearl
of a maggot!

                    I’ve
come to call life’s
  MYSTERY
“a shuffling of 
     layers.”
                                        



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An early version of  “Layers” was published in The Mississippi Review (University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg).