Can you separate
the omelet and the orchid?

The eggs from the open flower?

Did the sudden sharp yap of the dog
send a white light up your spine?

If you don't know if you're up or down,
bottom or top –

I am charmed and strange.

To process such perceptions,
negotiate these pexa et hirsuta,

would you barter Shereshevsky's
haywired brain?

You could recall your life –
more than yesterday –

and integers make interesting friends.

Or would you rather recognize a face,
comprehend a metaphor,

read, perhaps interpret,
the poem that you are?

(First published in Isacoustic, 10 April 2018.)