bless it and call it metaphor

On second thought,
let’s replace the meaningless
with superfluous.
Let’s replace the page with
a shoreline of tan sand and green
water. The water is green
with envy.
Let’s replace the envy
with certainty—
so that it’s green with certainty,
as is often said of the sea,
and that makes us sense
the tang of salt, the spirit
a-hover above the deep,
which we like to replace
with shallowness, which
we call substance
or creed.

Then let’s replace the highly
substantive creeds with poems.
After that, turn the poems into
a fine set of dentures,
so that we can take them out
and place them in a glass of brine.
The brine is to help
with the flavor.

Take the flavor and replace
it with light.
Translate light
so that we understand
its inclination of
irrepressible expansion.
In other words: give
the light a radiance and bless it
and call it metaphor.
Let the metaphor die and fold
it again and again like a deck
of cards until it becomes
a seed.
Take the seed
between your fingers
and give it to a blackbird.

Any bird will do, as long
as it’s black and as long
as the black is iridescent, so
that from it the many other colors
can open their wings and be
birds themselves.

Give to their beaks, each one,
a seed and a letter
of the alphabet.
Tell them to return
their seeds and letters to
the tower across the certain sea.
Take the sea
in your hands, gently,
and allow it to drink itself
until it becomes a clean
page, gently tinted,
but otherwise ambiguous.
On the page write a word.
Then stand back
and look at your word
while the page flutters away
in a sudden wind from the sea
that had never for a moment,
and thankfully,
been itself.

Know that your word
will die unless it dies—
yes, dies and mixes
with other words
to become another word.