Heikki Huotari

Meditation On Matthew 6:28

a million lilies will be stilled
—Heather McHugh

God stopped the lilies spinning with consideration not with pheromones. The lilies had anomalies/anatomies to sing but didn’t care to. Prophecy was self-fulfilling and a molecule from Aristotle’s former body floated; thumbs on scales precluded cataclysms and three other kinds of kindness; spanning one caesura nonchalantly, nature spawned another, even wider, like an absence, like a sum of wants.

The Feedback Loop

The last full moon was fuller. Now the boundary of necessity is porous. I don’t need that pigment – I have wings. When in a sea of leaves and needles I need only brandish an imagination. Every word I speak is channeled back to me a seventh of a second later. Bite me, I say to the deity, You might have spent the morning watching hummingbirds extracting nectar but you didn’t. In your stead I did.

Peripheral

To distinguish infrared from ultraviolet, I’ve interposed a wavelength even I can see. If you are not a trick of light, try flying, like me, in alignment. Memories are made of this not that. Resemblances are tenuous. A second second of elation may just bust the bank. So mind your manners demon, mine’s the only voice you have, and on a moment’s notice I’d disown you.

In a past century, Heikki Huotari attended a one-room school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower, is now a retired math professor, and has published one collection, Fractal Idyll (A..P Press), and three chapbooks, one of which won the Gambling The Aisle prize. Another collection (from Lynx House) is in press.
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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.