A woman studying the fracture properties
of coconuts may insist that nature
breaks its own structures reluctantly, along fault lines
of hard resin on fibrous interiors.
She might apply that principle to apples,
animal horns and wood,
profile a pineapple so that she might
learn something about destruction.
You stand alone at the edge of ice, push
a half-submerged tree branch deeper into a hole.
Your branch a lever, the entire frozen pond reacts:
you recognize, (with iterations!) Mandelbrot sets
forming across its surface. It crackles
loudly beneath you, obeying symmetry,
brokenness: illusions begin
to thaw as water seeps into lines from below.
Coconuts have nothing to do with ice. Levers
do not determine fault lines. The sound of wood
splitting has nothing to do with the smell
of a forest in January. Wait. Apples
just might
have everything to do with a pond in winter. I’m suggesting:
a woman in a lab, chiseling antlers to celebrate
breaking, has everything
to do with you
standing in the cold wood, holding a tree branch.
--First published in Fourth River, Autumn 2011
