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Nolan Willett Jun 2019
I chant the right incantation
With a little inflection at the end,
So why can’t I ascend?
Am I doomed to this stagnation?
And the wrong spirit offend?
Unfolding into itself, inviolable
in prosaic self-*******,
a boundless repertoire
of shape yearns forth surreptitiously
from inscrutable amniotes to claim
time as its own:

  Here a thicket
  of sycamores, there a baldaquin
    of pinnate branches, yonder
      a periphery of marigolds, below
        a cacophony of hyraxes, above
    the corpuscle of a lynx, the mid-flight
   jink of a darting swift and moribund
  crawl of a mollusk;

     Hymenoptera coaxing
     their haploid broods into teeming
     life as a cell of the swarm
         and viviparous apes cajoling
         suckling chimerae at the fathomless
         fountainhead of a rosy breast;

       Higher still,
       Cirrus cephalopods traversing
       the trench of sky, dandelions
       hitch-hiking the drift of a barren plains'
       wavering hum on cockchafers'
       forewings and a turbine's
       bombinating pulse, the chattering
       of roots ravenous for depth --

Jittering bangtails the hallowed echoes
of lascivious manes --

   inchoate sprout-hood the daedal
   nonage of towering evergreens --

      the plaintive shrift of elegiac
      redbreasts a goad to silent elation --

A likeness unlike
     (vocabularies of vertiginous blinds)
          (the eyes of ignorance closing)
             (the mouth of the mystery)
                that spurns the truth of tongues

                     is nature naturing.
A somewhat uncharacteristic display of vocabulary. Rather than ostentation, my intent here was to convey the scope of nature in vivid but elusive prose.

Proteus, ever changing to remain fundamentally himself, perfectly embodies nature's unity-in-multiplicity. He evinces a dynamic view of nature espoused by Goethe, and in authentic Platonic thinking. Essentially, the entire web of life is a single organism, and each discrete life but a cell therein.

"Nature naturing" (*natura naturata*) is commonly known as "Spinoza's God".
Leaves skitter as shoed feet
fall silently, wind clinging
at clothes in the death
                  of summer.

     A once-verdant echo
          sighs into place
      clouds weigh heavy
            warmth is savored
                  the grasses die
                       instinct stirs.

The world dies
      to be renewed
            in glorious flame,
      changing to stay
the same.
(igne natura renovatur integra)

— The End —