There is a moment before a shape

hardens, a color sets.

Before the fixative or heat of   kiln.

The letter might still be taken

from the mailbox.

The hand held back by the elbow,

the word kept between the larynx pulse  

and the amplifying drum-skin of the room’s air.

The thorax of an ant is not as narrow.

The green coat on old copper weighs more.  

Yet something slips through it —

looks around,

sets out in the new direction, for other lands.

Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.

As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:

it cannot be after turned back from.