Where Are You, Karen Volkman?: An Ode
In a circuit-loop of my brain, you are
weaving bioluminescent spider webs.
The stars have chilled nicely below zero.
Sound has blanketed you, perhaps. Perhaps
you chanced yourself alone on some floatation
nearing the Arctic Circle. Perhaps you’ve sunk
your line too deep and you are tethered
to ancient cypress roots that even sonar
has not mapped. I think of your turning
to crystal, crystalline, with a joyful menacing
clinking as though all the bones
of the body might shatter. Finding you has
been all dead ends. I only know you
by the geometry you’ve made, the mirroring
sentence, self transfixed by the mind’s
porous vessel. Your words are shards
to shift, each letter laser-cut. Have you
become, as I have, distracted by distance,
a halt midway through, unimpressed
by the same old cartwheel? Your paving
stones, I follow, winded in the catch,
sun-blanched to a new blankness of never know.