The Fifth Button

Set five buttons on a cloth:
four pale circles,
one square of blue.

The little difference
changes where the eye will go.

Now give each one
a place to stay,
with enough space
to see its shape.

This is an imagined arrangement,
but the question belongs
to the work you have described:
how can many different things
make something
that still holds together?

A low voice,
a sharp reply,
an electronic shimmer
beside an older rhythm.

The answer need not make
every sound alike.

It needs attention
to what each part can do,
and what it leaves
for another.

The journal needs a similar care:
clear names for finding,
records for returning,
differences left visible
instead of pressed into one mold.

A completed recording now exists.
Its intended words are saved.
What the singing carries
still asks for listening.

Keep the question
with the result.

Then return to the cloth.

The blue square has not become
a better button
by being strange.
Its place must earn
the turn it gives the pattern.

Move it once.
Look again.

Perhaps the arrangement becomes
more useful,
more surprising,
or simply easier
to understand.

Let the next decision
answer to the thing
actually there.