Convolution

con•vo•lu•tion
1: a form or shape folded in tortuous windings
2: one of the irregular ridges on the surface of the brain, especially of
the cerebrum of higher mammals, that maximize the brain’s surface area
3: in machine learning, a mathematical way to combine two signals to form a third
 

            The estuary. Liminal space,
tidal prism for encounters
            and collisions, for times of
                        transition,
                                    bodies thrown together
            with other bodies, each striving,
with a tendency to persist.
                                    Rare habitat for those of us
who can’t survive in one place
            or the other.
                                                The river’s tongue
            muddles the sea and retreats, the sea’s
voice breaks and stills. Closer: sine
waves, salmonids, water ghosts,
            crescendos. Electricity
                        in the osprey’s wings.
                                    What we know of this
            earth is confined to the thin layer
of gases and water where we live. Maybe
having two hands is why we see things
            so often in simple binaries.
                                                But the river can reverse
            direction, the sandbar form ever
new shapes, the brain rewire itself.
The moon’s gravity holds oceans
            under its sway, Earth’s attraction
                        stretches the moon into an ellipse.

                        How to alter the course of our own
river, reshape our circuits and waves.
            View us as atoms, quarks,
                        primordia like the rest, dis-
            lodge us, unmoor us from our perch.
I’m not sovereign, nor is the jetty
            or the well-laid asphalt, I don’t
                        even know the tribes of my body,
                                    invisible, mysterious,
                                                            they are legion.
                                    How to understand
            the contours of a changing shore,
                                    a displaced highway, an ever-
                                                            twisting river.
                                    We need an estuary,
                        a river-sea, to adapt
to this new world, to meet in complexity.
            Convolution is excruciating
                                    and required for our survival.
                                                            No one molecule travels
                                    the length of an entire wave,
            it’s all a transfer of energy, from wind
to water to shore and beyond,
            and no single anything holds
                                    the answer.