Paulann Petersen
	Span What my hand learns, my heart already knows. What -- for an instant of its longingful life -- I grasp between thumb and finger's whorling cushions, grows too in my core: each sprout, each twig, any handful of earth pressing its faint sour molding of leaf, sweet decay into my palm's own plumped furrows. The anywhere-skin's touch comes out of the heart and its endlessly-soon-to-be-ended beating. A hand's stroke, its hold, are the blood's tingle, its recognition of hard, succulent, world. Unhinged and hinged, the bending. Every hand. Its one wild heart. Ark Shape of the sun's own roundness, of a mid-cycle moon poised at the peak of its path through night. A filling, fully glass bowl floating into this room. Round ark that holds the whirl of yin and yang -- every creature's dark and light aboard. I circle one fingertip, gleamed with spittle, along the bowl's rim. My tongue has wet my body's only whorled skin, so this imprint of me can brush against a never-ending edge. Half a globe. Hollow. From its pole I hear an underworld drone. Hive The bee notes every moment. Takes notice from a thousand cousins of each veer and rise to the hive. Lets go its own dusted scent bit by bit. By its flurry makes -- later to spend -- more esters, now and now. Shudder and thrum, scent accreting. Blur and blunder, scent cast off to mark where the bee has been. Flowers are named for what they bring -- another flower's sex and bluster. Whichever way enough have traveled -- that becomes the path home.