COMPOSITION

Language is a diluted aspect of matter.

—Joseph Brodsky

No. Not diluted.

Flaked; wafered;

but not watered.

Language is matter

leafing like a book

with the good taste

of rust and exposure

the way ironwork

petals near the coast.

But so many more

colors than rust:

or, argent, others—

a vast heraldic shield

of beautiful readable

fragments revealed

as Earth delaminates:

how the metals scatter,

how matter turns

animate.