Silent Spread

SIR, the 28 spheres of Kamen’s harmony

Susceptible, inferred, immense, actual - the electron microscopy provides images of the virus long in memories.

It shows grey spinning, transforming this (I point to the past fifteen months) into orbs.

Here they are, grown enormous, before you in place, not within you in space. For what else can it become but the potential for indifferent attractiveness.

A memory, this spread; a novel micrography.

The SIR diagram is a mirror that creates a migratory pattern in the mind, as one would imagine birds flying, out of sight.
A line graph of red and blur lines on white grid paper.

Of birds then. The diagram is a symbol that brings nets down, and what gets trapped in nets, as it is expelled from our hands, and rid by water, is a thing, that reflects, traces, and symbolizes.

Both the virus, and us.

The universe participates in making the artist well, and an instigator.

The participation of the invisible moves the virus into view.

A speck, a spread, a tiny writing in the air, a diagram, an avian metaphor, an object installed to illuminate. All of this, completely noiseless.

And this is why I write to you, in order to not speak the word, and have it just be seen.

Notes:

Poem by S.J. Fowler in response to Rebecca Kamen’s artwork. Embedded SIR model graph edited by Rebecca Kamen. Read more about the collaborations between Fowler and Kamen in their Poem of the Day guest editor blog post.

Copyright Credit: Published by the Poetry Foundation from the artists' exhibition catalogue.