Make dust our paper and the ink will be our tears and to write
     will be to stand there remembering, sorrowfully remembering
the days, the weeks, the years, which is an adaptation
     of the second Richard, whose metaphors were inclined to divorce

notions like the truth and spirit and one’s wishes from the clodgy
     mucky rocky solids of our planet, pulverized and shed
routinely into the dust we stand writing into, and when finished
     we watch the winds erase our progress, which was no progress at all

but stasis in a double sense, which is because we stood there
     as we poured our little tribute out, but also because it stood for
our having done so, a kind of monument like the wavy
     traces a snake makes under the right circumstances, which include

the snake itself (a given), sand in quantity, time, the volition of
     the snake to move through space, which is also to move
through time, and lastly the capacity of the snake to do so, meaning
     the absence of hindrances intrinsic to the snake or otherwise in play.

No small task! And yet the number of snakes at present writing
     movement from here to there, both specifically and as an example
of beauty to be found in phenomena, proves equally uncountable
     as sand in quantity, waves in water, waves likewise through the air.