The Book of Sediments

Beside my bed the lamplight glows: a glass base
filled with shells containing
news of ocean. Each shell encloses what the sea
says to the listener. Each whorl and coil
reflects the secrets there.

                                 Echo and Narcissus.
He falls in love with the image: his vision
flowers. She pines away for the other: nothing
left but the voice. The sun-drowned
sepals in the old stereoscope we called
a stereopticon: two complementary views—right
eye and left —caught on film the brain
registers and light fuses to a third dimension.