Poem!

The Game of Definition by Negation

Start with any quotidian thing: a flower, a dog,
the calico that flounces into the room
and curls up in the boxtop, eyes narrowed
at the musky white cheeses oozing
onto the dark grainy crackers your friends like
and that go so well with the dry pinot noir
one of them, Kathy, brings every other week
along with another man from accounting.

These men shake hands well
but won’t take a second glass of wine,
either red or white. Their collars miss the ties
of their long work days. Kathy favors
the active ones, the men who bike home,
right pants leg bound with a postal rubber band
that they ponder over whether or not to report.
She shares with them their love of pencils
the splintery wood she imagines from a forest

filled with light sliding over a deep bed
of dried leaves as the axes and saws
of lumberjacks fly up into the incensed air
to float down slowly, as if in a movie.
Small and large woodchips mist around them.
The men pause, take off goggles, earplugs,
dab at sweat with red and blue bandanas.
One or another trudge deeper into shadowy underbrush
to relieve himself. Nobody says much.

Your friends will look at you when you stop,
booklet in hand. For this game, you say,
reaching down for your drink, that’s an elk.