Glass No. 11
by Jane Rosenberg LaForge
Glass is motion inhibited
by heat and carbon dioxide;
by temporary aesthetics;
by the tastes of the instant
in color and shape, in thickness
and curve. Like a waterfall
tapered by ice, yet in reverse.
Water paves its own way
beyond soil and stones.
Glass must be guided in its
initial moments. When glass
begins to fall, it becomes
strongest at its bottom,
a swelling that is again staunched.
When glass finally outlives
its obstacles--the frames
of aging houses, contours
of swans’ necks and horses’
groomed tails, grace dictated
by genetics, miniaturized—
it cracks. Its pattern is compromised.
Glass does not simply break.
It erodes. Fortunately glass
can be replaced. There is no dustbin
of glass history, glass art
or animals. That is for ideas
and people, only one of which
can be recycled, an approximation
of its first movements stalled.
My sister, splintering from the inside,
explained all this to me, the physics
of glass and cancer, dual presences
sanding against her bones.