As elusive as rutabaga is the position
of locking the steering wheel
into the arc of a roundabout
and spending the day
going 'round and 'round
without care, without regret -
a potentially merry merry-go-round,
a spin cycle of spinners,
spinsters, spin doctors,
all spinning toward something or other
with the circularity
of a Shaker spinning wheel
or otherworldly enso
where the liquidity of precision
takes off the top of the head
like a line from Emily Dickinson,
transporting one
to a land whose inhabitants,
white-haired, bearded,
possibly bespectacled,
clothed in loose-fitting garments,
wax philosophic
on language's imprecision
with voices echoing the words
in the brown first philosophy text
sitting on the bottom shelf
where it was placed
a day or two after classes ended
some 40-odd years ago.
