What is the Difference
Stein asked what is the difference. She did not ask what is the
sameness. Did not ask what like is. Or proximity. Resemblance.
Did not ask what child of what patriarch what height what depth
didn’t use a question mark but still wondered at the difference
what mutinies it carries over what vast Arctic what far shore.
What is the difference between blind and bond. Between desk
and red. Between capsize and sail. Between commodity and
question. A lively thing, a fractured thing. To smile at the difference.
(Such gray clouds passing over. Thick, wet sky.)
What is the difference between mutiny and dust. Between noose
and edge. Between brittle and obey.
Between shunned and stun. What is the difference.
As now, Mary Shelley’s monster flees to the north, his sack of
books his lone companions.
by Laurie Sheck
from the Academy of American Poets
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