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| Coeur d'Alene resident Mark Sales told KBOI 2News that he and his father spotted the floating object on Saturday near the boardwalk. (Photo courtesy Mark Sales) —KOMONEWS (Seattle), March 22, 2017 |
Perhaps Paul Bunyan was rolling bones to stake Babe
against enough food to last the winter, the errant throw
skidding over the Rockies and into the soup. Theories
on how lake monsters could transform into any object
hung on rearview mirrors don’t account for this die
castaway forever tumbling toward its opposite or twin.
Alien vessels were round until the Borg sucked us in,
this camouflage of games and chance rolling in waves,
an invasion of our psyche, lust for numbers, and desire
to be on the last square. Dice, after all, are about turns
and seizing the next piece of land, inexorable steps
in an American game where there is just one winner.
Sometimes the die would disappear in evening mist,
the makeshift worlds we build ephemeral and slick,
until that last passage onto shore, final roll stuck,
the deity of odds nowhere to be seen in the picture.
A previous contributor to TheNewVerse.News, Martin Ott’s most recent book is Spectrum, C&R Press, 2016. He is the author of seven books and won the De Novo and Sandeen prizes for his first two poetry collections. His work has appeared in more than two hundred magazines and a dozen anthologies. He tweets and blogs.
