Like the ricochet of bolts and screws
bouncing off the walls of wells
The steep decline of rocky surfaces
the pools of bilge and mud and
tiny, unknowable creatures
who could live only in darkness.

Being showered now with shapes from heaven
hexagons, cylinders, spirals
perfection yet unmatched by the
geological movements of the deep
earth and rock, whose spirals and rivets
were like the creases of an unmade bed
and not like those, drawn by Euclid
and laid out by thunderous machines

Like the bottom that could not be known fully,
but only peered at from a height, or as an
unconscious memory of a time before birth
Like the forgotten end of a tunnel, which
was also a beginning

Like the echo of the ricochet,
cackling in the ears of the thrower

And like the thrower, whose gesture
is mocked by the echo and the emptiness
of a response which is an echo
return to sender

He pushed the envelope into the mailbox
The perfectly formed shapes of letters
within, calling out in joyous chorus
to the girl, long since gone
and whose only response
return to sender