The Meaning of Mercury

Mercuric nitrate in solution
by a process called carotting
conjured felt from animal skins
and madness in nineteenth century hatters. 

Speaking of mercury one can say 
cinnabar commonly milked for it,
lovely word, calomel, even syphilis!
	Watch these shinning lenses,

these ponderous bubbles,
wander, scurry, cavort,
swallow one another, centripetally
in-spinning to a tremulous lake.

Quicksilver massages
to induce immortality
killed China's first emperor,
Qin Shi Huang Di.

Come close, watch yourself
be a clown, a monster,
multiply, divide, and get lost
in the fun house mirror,

Breathing mercury fumes can induce
a burning sensation in one's stomach,
changes in the color of one's urine,
madness and death.

Bang!  Smash it to smithereens
(because, why not? 
because you can't not)
to a squall of silver embers.

Six thousand terracotta warriors
guard Qin Shi Huang Di's mausoleum
to protect him in his afterlife
from spirits that might otherwise do him harm.

How they hurry back to the center
like ants to an apple core,
like spokes to a hub, like spoils to the victor,
like nobody's business.

And there's your face again, 
distorted but recognizable,
looking up from the reborn lake
with a new appreciation of mercury.

When the Mad Hatter asks Alice,
"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"
and Alice gives up and asks the answer,
the Hatter replies, "I have no idea."