Lucretius loved Epicurus, knew the world through him; his meaning was clear: love as a way of knowing, of assuming the known. To know is to narrate. People die trying to tell what it was like there then. Others die of not trying. The form of this telling is, for example, a trellis. A growth controlled unpredictable within measure. Trellis. Tri licium. three threads. The weaver knows through the fingers the way worlds hold together. Basket makers. The shadow of a trellis is filled against itself, against measure. See the sun try again to stop the movement of the rose climbing among the woven ways.
Copyright © 2014 by Bin Ramke. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on April 23, 2014. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.