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© 2009 Allan Brown "Edges" is part of a sequence in progress dealing with various aspects of art. Allan Brown's work has appeared on the Monday's Poem site since 2004. His twenty-first volume of poetry, titled "Excursions," will be issued by Alfred Gustav Press later this year. A slightly different form of this poem was part of the Art Talk exhibition at Vancouver Island University in summer, 2009.

Edges

Inner and outer, shaping,
unshaping
                     (but somehow, you know,
it all manages to come together)

How is born ever the One
from its Many? follow me,
follow to the inside skeletal,
that hung-again decoration
of bone bits, clickety moving
in place of each others, reaching
another shutter yes,
or slits and traces front from back—
in whose Image made?

                                       Or
the outside umbilical, staring
through my Other's other,
into the meaning of night,
as with a sort of low
anatomical interest I watch
the hesitant street lights poking
at the belly of the sky.

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