Dans Moyen L'age

Passions, great or otherwise, could perhaps
Return, the way, if worried enough, ashes
May brighten. Marriages matter
Very much and not. Flavors
Are no longer, though others
Step in, delectable very much and/or
Sort of. Body is landmark
Unto itself and suspect
Of emergent crimes. The hand
On the broad canvas still moves,
Propelled by sense and the beginnings
Of liberation, the end of jeunesse
And je ne sais quoi. But the world
Is fizzy still, still 13 ½ feet of air
Weighs one pound. In the middle
Of unquantifiable wrong
And worry, we’re inclined to stay,
Take a Sunday walk through an antique store
With signs saying “You break it,
You bought it.” But breakage
And buying have already shouldered
Glaciers; they are a species of magnet,
A species of regret.

*Angela Ball is currently a professor at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM). in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. There she works at the Center for Writers, a creative writing program that offers M. A. and Ph.D. degrees in English with creative writing emphasis and creative thesis or dissertation (Centers for Writers: WWW). She is also an editor for the Mississippi Review at USM's Center for Writers. Her most recent work, THE MUSEUM OF THE REVOLUTION: 58 EXHIBITS, appeared from Carnegie Mellon University Press in 1999.