I'm from Rhode Island very far from here,
and there's a little sort of drainage
pond in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, which
is down near the shore, that by luck happens
to be the habitat for many, many, many beautiful lotus
flowers, amazing lily pads and these things
that just like tower on windy little fat stems.
It's just the most miraculous thing.
You would never expect to see that in Rhode Island.
There's an explanation for it, but we
don't need to get into that.
Just to know that there's a miracle in Rhode Island,
and I saw it.
And so I wrote this--
I wrote this poem after that, because to see it does
make you feel that the impossible is not
only possible, but at hand.
And it's called "Boom."
"Lotus in the mill pond are an image of composition,
like swans or some comparable waterfall with long thin neck
and propensity for reflection, or for what
passes as reflection but is unburdened of its object.
There is a stillness and a motion all at once.
They are a gift from heaven.
They reverberate with presence like periscoping showerheads
in mantis green or fluffy pink eyeballs suspended mid-flight.
They are a laugh provoked not by vanity or mockery,
but happiness in light, as if against all likelihood.
Even the air is moving up around these flowers,
which, anchored in the muck and wriggling on snakelike stalks
amid leaves like floating platters the size of manhole
covers, act as subwoofers in a system
wired to someplace endless, someplace sheerer
than this ghost of a reservoir that fed the waterwheel that
powered the iron mill long since converted into condos.
The lotus boom the low frequencies
that recruit large pools of neurons in the listener
to lock the brain into another rhythm, which
is to say that they relieve one of oneself.
It's hard to account for but easy to fathom, which derives
from the Old English for the length of outstretched arms
so that to take the measure of a thing
is also simply to embrace it."