Hunting Expedition

It worries me that the beast we hunt in a poem (whereby we hunt ourselves) once caught, and butchered, and roasted, will never seem as savory to the tongue as it did hissing on the spit, where, as the fat melted and fell into the coals it shot up solar flares--the slow turning of the hours were marked by the small transformations from red to grey to black. Once dressed, once sliced and arranged on a platter with a juicy apple stuffed in its face, everyone will say it's such a boar, it's all been done before, the guts and flesh and gore, everyone will make us believe we're boars, that we've all been done before (which we have), that similar feasts have been served in similar ways at different times and perhaps will be till the ends of time. And when the revelers have put away their desire for bitch and moan, they plant their faces in the trough, nibble as much at the tender as at the stringy bits, lick their fingers and retire.

It worries me not because it will happen but because it has: there is nothing to learn from. The past has already learned from the past and has concluded: there is nothing to learn.

there is no coincidence
that burning rhymes with learning
or lime with rime and time.
rime with time, thyme with rhyme:
therein the universe self-contained.