I. The Creation of the 
Question Mark

It grew slowly, atom by atom, curving
its serpentine line around a doubt.
For eons it hung suspended in the air
like a shepherd’s crook, an ebony cane
a blind woman hung out at midnight
on an invisible clothesline.
It did not form itself from Adam’s mouth,
it did not sprout as a kinky white hair
from Gilgamesh’s never-trimmed beard,
it did not electrify loose ganglia
into syntactic fright in God’s mind,
nor curdle the earthworm, nor shape
the sickle that mows down everything.
Like a lily, it roused itself to life,
unfurling into reason’s limbo quietly,
and it left in its wake a single teardrop,
a tiny pinprick of dew, a dab of salt
for the minions of air to lick eternally—
that minute mirror begetting wonder.