Poetics of Space

And, though its beauty lay in quiescence, it was of course a living thing,

as each well considered cut there was imbued with and thus was the creation of intent; 

every action upon its charitable flesh an expression of what is basic in our souls, 

the human's need to approach silence, the comfort of a womb. 

For this treasure box's duty was the most sacred: 

whatever intricate charms were stored in its depths - and they were great - 

it was the gestation place for our imagination, our waking dreams.

And so the carpentress finally came to the task of the box's cover and felt unkind to leave it flush

with the top, so she set it in a fair bit to conceal its edges, which many would find impractical,
and that felt better. 

But still, having developed a relationship of sympathy with this small, graceful creature 

lain before her maternal hands, she looked at the cover there and remembered being a child, 

trespassing on haunted properties with a curious gang of friends, 

each member continuously and furtively vying for the innermost position of the formation 

(a school of baitfish assailed by phantom yellowfins, 

ebbing continuously into itself - an eerily taciturn ballet between self-preservations),  

and the terrible feeling of any aspect exposed to caprices of the dark, housing what imagined thieves, 

and so she found and attached a nice leather flap to be pulled over the cover, hiding it so that it too might sleep and dream its own dreams.

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And, have you heard this trivia?, The Kilogram is locked in a safe somewhere secret and dreamy,

in a secluded french chateau among an airy field of baby's breath and lavender.

Long since dead, behind a rustic door and under the cataract clouds of an old zen warrior,

because it is important that we keep it safe.

And, have you heard this trivia?, they're sad because that beloved old cylinder

"is mysteriously losing weight - if ever so slightly."

And, they say, why must everything change?

why must everything not want to stay the same,

not care to be kept safe?

We are not silly! they scream, to want to be kept safe.

And that block of alloy contentedly withers away,

as does everything -

except space.

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A galaxy is but a pocketwatch for a pocketwatch, our Earth pocketed in one as the same, used for the same. These squirrels tussling across the grass, clenched head-to-tail like some furry yin-yang, are but one exquisite gear (made of smaller gears) in what is a finely crafted, intricate machine. And of course it is completely solid, fitted together tightly and yet constantly churning within and about itself; space and light, those evanescent things, its most substantial components. Not filled with but built of space. Space within space upon space, but none of it free. There is not room for one more grain of sand in the universe. That is how precisely we, space, were made. Space cannot go unused. And these warm blooded gadgetries which I watch apart of me, set there out in "space" apparently oblivious to me, still reaching into me through what spectral levers and sheaves, with what delicate fingers, and making my heart go click...click...click.

And some might say "but new grains of sand are created every second, by the will of winds and waters," and I say that they have always been there and are merely carved away, re-placed, tabulating the passing of moments. For moments themselves are carved out of space but we also need things to unlock the silent architecture of our memories and toward this end have been given the deserts as reliquaries.