Passion Flowers and Puzzle Boxes
Scientists and poets alike have yet to find
whether certain experimental hybridizations
of radio waves and silver go-go boots in any way
affect the erratic trajectories of UFOs;
Though, they now know that the geometry of fireflies
may have some influence over the delicate symbiosis
of communication satellites, train yards
and Blue Turtle migrations.
However, despite recent controversial reports
there has been no independent confirmation
on whether the random arrangement
of orange blossoms on a city sidewalk,
slick with rain, has any more relation
to the performance of a North Korean
featherweight in the 9th than
a performance of Beethoven’s 9th
by the South Korean Philharmonic does
to the discovery of designs
for a steam-driven engine
written on papyrus.
But, one doesn’t need a steady diet
of coral calcium deposits or subterranean
cold-storage of arcane information
to see that a cracked engine block
is bound, cosmically,
to a crack-baby found
behind a dumpster in an alley
(alive and doing well we’re told),
that beauty-parlor patter is richly infused
with important information regarding escape artistry,
living in the desert, the number “0” AND,
stealing household appliances
(specifically, toaster-ovens, it seems)
and, most importantly,
that a strangely warm winter-breeze
witnessed stirring a light bulb
hanging on the end of a string
will eventually result in a brilliant idea
unfolding like a passionflower or
Chinese puzzle box of infinite digression
somewhere down the integer line
of an, as yet, undetermined causal chain.
Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Fence Post Blues (River Dog Press, 2023). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.