always absent

purple spaceships fly
in tall green grass
with blue radar antennae


it's not one flower
it's five competing
to be king of the pile


could be we've found
a favourite among the lot
yet only one grows


collecting specimens along the way
marsh yields strangeness
purple crystal trips


spread like explosion of shattered glass
with no projectile to break the tensile
resistance of a surface reflecting


shaped to be an indication of direction contrary to flow the river doesn't know whether the rock told it where to go or the water made the stone adapt to a pattern of recognition consistent with the way gravity works until that one stone changed the tone of flow and interrupted the steady stream of water-borne emptiness that slips between molecules always absent and created a vibration still sending out waves