Size / / /

I think about a bumper sticker I once saw:

"Picture Whirled Peas."

Perhaps I am to think of an ocean

of green legumes joining hands;

this is hard to do,

so let's start small.

I'll visualize instead pea soup shoved out of a can,

no water added yet,

clinging together en masse

as it stands upright in the microwave bowl,

waiting for me to add tapwater

and three minutes of electromagnetic flux.

Now I'm ready to start seeing the world:

a blue green portion of space,

turning on its slightly askew axis

as it tries to come together

in some sort of unified mix

of greenery, gravity, and water.

There, I've got it,

something also like stone soup:

enough to magically feed

all its creatures and renew itself.

No harder to picture, really,

than the whole mystery

of why we're on this ride to begin with,

clinging to a stone in space.




Duane Ackerson's poetry has appeared in Rolling Stone, Yankee, Prairie Schooner, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Cloudbank, alba, Starline, Dreams & Nightmares, and several hundred other places. He has won two Rhysling awards and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Salem, Oregon. You can find more of his work in our archives.
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25 Mar 2024

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