What is the source of significance? Is it entirely human? Can a simple, random event become elevated beyond its essence? How? Why? Sometimes, we just overthink. Here’s a little exploration by Hugh Anderson.

 

A tarnished scrap, a paper corner torn away
tangles a moment in bare branches
and flits across traffic
across windshields and nascent rain
Then on the hard edge of the wind, ascends

Is there somewhere despair pursuing
a parchment corner with the sigil
of a  wizard king, ripped from hands
new minted to diplomacy and sure now
of doom so many ways?

Or fugitive from the patent office,
an intricate design for revolution:
a dumbwaiter to carry prayer to god?
This small scrap the key, the circuit
without which all is fantasy

A scrap of prayer, a mustard seed
words that could shore up
a crumbling nation and its divided souls.
Whatever.  Few eyes follow
as it mounts the wind to drown in cloud

Hugh Anderson started writing in longhand, graduated to a Remington Manual, then an IBM Selectric. At some point he discovered Microsoft Office and has never looked back. Recent publications include Right Hand Pointing, Praxis Magazine Online, The Willawaw Journal, Panoplyzine, Vallum, 3Elements Literary Review and forthcoming in Cold Mountain Review. He has one Pushcart Prize nomination.