Life folds you into a paper crane;
Yet you feel like an alligator,
Taste sweet as honey,
Look like Garbo,
Sound like a Stradivarius,
Smell like mangled marigolds
Smooth as glass.
The tinkle of fresh bread, Leonardo and Paris remind you that alligators can’t be creased.
Yet a yellowed amphibian in your scrapbook begs to be folded.
Galumping downhill sends you backward faster and faster,
Until you taste like a fool.
You are the wooden dragon of yesterday burning yourself with your own fire, and that Phoenix actually dies, never to raise hope again.
So you fold yourself into that paper crane;
And Bucky is so proud of you, of what you will be, a wad of wobbling glass making sense only to the logical mind of your smiling swamp thing.

“Vive la France!” you hear him say, scaly tail scraping circles in stinking, fertile mud.