Landscaped
To the left,
chinese landscape
and no porcelain around him.
Simple trains outrunning very small people,
the dead walls of an orchard,
the pulled skin of a whale,
they boy pointing to his collected shapes.
There are ways we all collapse.
Our faces fold abruptly up into their pleats,
and no one notices how
each step was placed
delicate by the heel,
by its tiny walnut mind
by its tiny prawn arms.
Premeditation of a dynasty.
Things were timed, flailing the way they did.
We filled entire jars full of oysters, decadent pastries,
first-born daughters.
We capped and shook, let sit.
It is easy to be epic.
We preserve all the wrong things.
Each landscape drawn precisely onto the turning body.
We merit looking.