If the Lena River courses north
farther than the Mississippi south,
draining Yablonovyy mountain snow
into the ice-laced Laptev Sea, then

somewhere her eyes' hue must have a rival.
In the geothermal prehistory
of pressure under what became Brazil,
in the igneous light sharp-sifted by
its facet-concentrated chronicle.
In something luminous deep undersea.
In the kincob that confesses quetzal
careening through light-karsted canopy.
Or widow's-mite-given onto insects:
a beetle's back prism-tilled minutely;
dragonfly's hexamitos-thrilled thorax;
crushed on my windshield as I drove away,
desire that kept glowing against the dusk,
star-sistered weeping that had been firefly.