On rain washed paper dried, ink

still blurs. But all words

are stains. The paper’s rippled

lunar, mountain and crater,

and seas on the moon, misnomer

of plains that looked like

water once, no-end-to-it shadows,

fractal to fractal. The telescope’s eye

fooled the eye. From there, does

earth rise and set? Or a thrush,

would it sing its trouble backward?—

the most private tremor first, then

the public part, famously

melodic but fierce, really it’s

fierce: stay   the fuck   away. I know

that lie, Sea of Tranquility.