Errand Upon Which We Came

          7.113

Gentle Reader, begin anywhere. Skip anything. This text
is framed
fully for the purposes of skipping. Of course,

          7.114

it can
be read straight through, but this is not a better reading,
not a better life. You are being asked

         7.115

to move with great
rapidity. As if it weren’t there. As if you were a frog,
a frog that since it’s disappearing

         7.116

thinks to ask,
for the first time, in which element it really does
belong. Leaping progress

        7.117

will consist
in considering this and closing the book. Anything
else will represent a settled course.

       7.118

Indeed, it is true that much has fallen
through the cracks,
but the most painstaking and willful path

      7.119

will not recover this (recoverable?)
material any better
at all than the soft ziggy sampling butterfly approach.

     7.120

Gentle Reader,
who labors, who tugs up roots to get beyond roots
 —as it were—do roots entwingle

    7.121

space? Where do we mine that knowledge
of what cannot be precipitous, nor yet
delayed?

    7.122

What if the go(o)ds refuse
to go
to market? What then?

    7.123

Will is broken by the trials of all folktales, the Augean stables,
the straw spun. A nail
that fixes the center so the register is true—

    7.124

what the scale hangs on,
not what
the pointer points to.