2011/07/16

Enough Energy Held to Maintain the Order in Repair, Assure Further Consumption of Entropy




It's time for a friendly reminder: Fleabus is the greatest cat of all time and all her photographs are by my daughter Planet (unless otherwise noted).

And a Clops update: I haven't heard from the guy currently fostering Clops - he was supposed to call Friday to tell me about Clops' Thursday visit to the vet. I'd told him Monday that they should keep Clops if they want Clops - that I would relinquish any claim to Clops if the guy and his wife fell in love with Clops, and I think he thanked me - in any case he sounded relieved - though promised to keep me informed. I don't think Clops will come live with us - which is cool, the world is full of cats that need homes, we'll get one before the end of the summer - but just to taunt fate, if Clops does come to live with us we're now going to call him Aargh.

Meanwhile, I need to badger Planet to get me new Fleabus photos before Planet takes herself and her camera off to Ohio in ONE MONTH. Holyshit.












MECHANISM

A.R. Ammons

Honor a going thing, goldfinch, corporation, tree,
          morality: any working order,
       animate or inanimate: it
has managed directed balance,
          the incoming and outgoing energies are working right,
       some energy left to the mechanism,
some ash, enough energy held
          to maintain the order in repair,
       assure further consumption of entropy,
expending energy to strengthen order:
          honor the persisting reactor,
       the container of change, the moderator: the yellow
bird flashes black wing-bars
          in the new-leaving wild cherry bushes by the bay,
       startles the hawk with beauty,
flitting to a branch where
          flash vanishes into stillness,
       hawk addled by the sudden loss of sight:
honor the chemistries, platelets, hemoglobin kinetics,
          the light-sensitive iris, the enzymic intricacies
       of control,
the gastric transformations, seed
          dissolved to acrid liquors, synthesized into
       chirp, vitreous humor, knowledge,
blood compulsion, instinct: honor the
          unique genes,
       molecules that reproduce themselves, divide into
sets, the nucleic grain transmitted
          in slow change through ages of rising and falling form,
       some cells set aside for the special work, mind
or perception rising into orders of courtship,
          territorial rights, mind rising
       from the physical chemistries
to guarantee that genes will be exchanged, male
          and female met, the satisfactions cloaking a deeper
       racial satisfaction:
heat kept by a feathered skin:
          the living alembic, body heat maintained (bunsen
       burner under the flask)
so the chemistries can proceed, reaction rates
          interdependent, self-adjusting, with optimum
       efficiency—the vessel firm, the flame
staying: isolated, contained reactions! the precise and
          necessary worked out of random, reproducible,
       the handiwork redeemed from chance, while the
goldfinch, unconscious of the billion operations
          that stay its form, flashes, chirping (not a
       great songster) in the bay cherry bushes wild of leaf.