Gnomonic Growth

by Anne Starnes Kingsbury, Huntington Station, NY

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In his hand he holds

the perfect outer body

of a horseshoe crab.

They’re everywhere.

His eyes drift over them.

“They didn’t die,” I say.

A beach lounger leans closer,

to hear too.

“They outgrew their shells. Look,

the front edge opened like a seam,

and they emerged.”

Gnomonic growth.

Nature’s cruelty

becomes

Nature’s cleverness.

Not every seemingly sad story

is one, actually.

Some things grow

not to change

but to become bigger.

A perfect copy, an enlarging,

to become more oneself.

Gnomic increase:

The happy growth of wisdom.

An increased capacity to think,

brought about by the simple exercise

of living longer, engaged.

But longer implies

no longer young,

Nature’s cruelty,

Age signifies loss.

Not so for the mind and its

capacity to enlarge upon itself,

to become more of

the person you were,

with gnostic gains,

The bigger, better version

of your simpler, youthful self.

Nature’s cleverness.