Imperceptible Changes


I was reading The Doors of Perception for the nine-and-a-halfth time
(the halfth time, not to be confused with half time or part-time,
was the time I left it on a New Jersey bus, halfway through)

when I should have been studying physics; laws of dim light,
fading color, occlusion, illusion and all the other phenomena
lurking at the Threshold of Perception,

but it was nicer just to sprawl over the sun-bleached cushions
and describe an ever-decaying arc through a summer daze
in the swing on the Porch of Perception with a glass of lemonade,
supersaturated with sucrose in solution, imperceptibly
accumulating condensation out of the felted air
that wept down its slippery vertigo,

and I perceived that, out in the Dooryard of Perception,
the foliage of the wilting lilacs was looking
more smokable by the minute in the hazy afternoon

and beyond the peeling whitewash of the Gate of Perception,
which dangled from one distorted Hinge of Perception,
in the Roadway of Perception there seemed to be a procession
of immanent, tessellated beings who whirled past
in sintered, frangible radiance with a band of glass harmonicas,
trailing opalescent taffeta and a fragrance of tuberoses.


©2001 F.J. Bergmann

"Imperceptible Changes" appeared on Asinine Poetry

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