Mornings always remind me ofsomewhere else I’ve been—muggy five a.m. in July,Providence, Rhode Island,small, incongruous smell of smokewham Amazon rainforestrackety crows like macawson a perch pole next the lodge.The human mind is the icing on its cake,the way we cheat things into order,peeling off and correctly replacingthe colored stickers on a puzzle cube.Sort of satisfying solution, best enjoyedalone in one’s room, like shoutingyour anthem over another, insensible song.As my mother always says,“As your grandmother always said,this too shall pass”wishful attribution of stock phraselike putting your handover your mouthto silence your own breathingin a vacuumor not (you can tell a non-man-made lake by its roundness).As ancient figural linescan only be seen from the sky,we design what we can’t apprehend.So what if the world wereto reveal its formattingas in Word—returns andvectors bristling everywhich way? You’d freezefor fear of impalement.When a tree falls in tropical foresteverything leans, shoots,and the hole growsfrom the outside-in,annulling itself with lushness.And unlike other kinds of former holes(crystal-filled caves, those darnedin socks) it truly ceases to be,rather than its own antithesis.This insatiable appetitefor description—dingnailed itthe momentthe light’s no match for the lidwhat we used to call the human condition.____Kate Colby is author of four collections of poetry, including The Return of the Native (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011) and Beauport (Litmus Press, 2010). Her first collection, Fruitlands, won the Norma Farber First Book Award in 2007. She lives in Providence, RI.