To Scale

Max Schleicher

What mechanism breaks the day in miniatures?
At work, a new word appeared: scalable,
which also means vertical. An alcohol glare
snaps in the lake. The wind prints twill
impressions on the water, which is to say
maybe the word they want is fractal. The day
is pharmabright, which means it’s September.
Masts in the harbor might be the tops of timbers,
which bow and totter deep under the lake
and just breach the surface, stirring a limber
animation on the sea wall. Everything is cut
in pieces of sleep, subdivisions that scale up,
so the day arrives larger than itself on shore
or shrinks all at once into portraiture.