COLLARS

Do you remember Euclid with his forms,
Platonically ideal: circle, square,
And triangle? Now in my dotage I’m newly aware
Of geriatric morphology, and charmed

By the circles with thick perimeters: the Collars.
They’re doughnuts, moats and wedding rings, race tracks,
Atom smashers, lips; they’re coffee cakes,
Chokers, turbans, sweatbands, circumpolar

Jet streams, smoke rings, high Van Allen belts
And benthic mollusc beads, capos, thumbs
With opposing fingers, the cylinders of drums,
Wreaths, the round of Stonehenge, carrousels–

Transcendently the whirling galaxy;
The sphincters, tonsure, and prostate in such as me.

(140, December 24, 1993)

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