Agime walked through
where we kept our dessicated
taxidermy and faded handpainted savana trees
butterflies pinned in their cases by the clock hall
metal alchemical skeletal whirring and clicking

nearly the other side of the world
at the opposite of a museum (a gas station)
i am sitting caught in a breeze, window rolled to an inch
( smell of the road on a long trip )
that streetlight feeling of reststop highway exhaust
a chain pizza shop with tired and unexpectedly friendly staff
having the kind of day you can tell that smile is their first
relieved laughter

But at the museum the named one is walking.
"We come in with nothing," Yvats says,
dew forming under the soles of her feet and
along the path she traces with her finger
across the glass of the butterfly case,
"and we come out with nothing."
The butterflies twitch under her gaze as
if trying to escape their tiny deaths
but suddenly the glass falls away and
the wood falls away and they are free up around her
they are landing everywhere , on the prosthetic cavemen
on the dinosaur bones hung like dark sheets
( now they appear feathered as they once were , "birds:you tiny echo!" )
all searching for the moon among the motes of dust.

My liver is eaten by vultures;
I push a great stone for miles
which gets heavier when I turn my back.
Whose design is this lock, you million years,
you crazy and unfathomable immortality!

My friends,
I've found it!

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