At Home In The Muddle

Yes, yes, make order out of chaos,

that eleventh commandment.

Then why do I remember the fuzzy part,

that white horse in Nova Scotia that was a llama

or the anarchy of wild bulbs

overthrowing the desert,

how we spent an afternoon spotting a whale

that turned out to be a huge black rock?

Then there was the slow-moving train out of Delft

that wasn’t moving at all; only the illusion

owing to the adjacent one.

What did she mean when she said that or

didn’t say anything? Hard to read moods

with gusts of wind shifting the conifers

and the red canvas a commotion

of projections.

While I’m at it, who stole my camera

by the Strasbourg Cathedral? Maybe God,

that all-mischievous puppeteer. The long hand

of subtraction reminding me of the auberge

at the bend in the river by that village in Brittany

where there is no river

except for the waterway winding  

around my head in the MRI?

It is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

about which I am certain. To live in the muddle,

that familiar chaos we call order

as in a song I forgot the words to

or the movie of my life where I came in

toward the end with eyes still wide with the sun.