Here is the layering of stability—
the archeologists, I am told, imagine
the earth as layered sheets, the texture
and density, a kind of divination
of an empire’s fate: what will be left
standing, what will eventually fall.
And when I imagine what lies below
this land of mastodon bones, old enough
to seem like inventions, solid enough
to worry the faith of begats upon begats,
their exotic physics (we are pondering
the engineering), I think of this wall
mapping our future. The last layer
before sky is us, and then the deeper
lines until we find ice and icing.
It is true that a well-constructed
torte is a kindly metaphor for this
if one cuts a cross section neatly,
Gardenia Leaf on a White Wall
Kwame Dawes
Kwame Dawes is the author of twenty-two books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His collection Nebraska was published in 2020. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and George W. Holmes University Professor at the University of Nebraska. His awards include an Emmy, the Forward Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Nora Magid Award, and the Wyndham Campbell Prize for Poetry. In 2021, Dawes was named an editor of American Life in Poetry.