Perfect Machine

© Beth Roberts

The makers of the perfect machine understood memory: in the beginning were the good voices that bevelled our eyes and filled our ears at ground level with the world's own curvature, gave us the lure of touch; and at the other end grief, the need--gang bang at Lethe-- to be the death of grief. The perfect-machine-makers had read up on remembrances: from our parents' bed to the risk we take when we mistake night for a meadow, a gale for a lark. What imagination! In commemoration of faulted hearts they tilted the machination of love--imperfect provision-- toward a more perfect improvisation. Those who made the machine perfect knew, concerning souvenirs, a thing or two. We want the parts of the body to wear, like those gilded strands of Shire's hair stolen from the filed where the horses yield all day their quivering hides to the lonely. They drew our field of vision out from the field. Go and find your own piece of pony.