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).