The small parallelipipeds traversed
on the hairs of leaves, its casual
adventitious body roughening
the surface while a hundred armed mites
rang’d, breaking one another’s necks.
Smutty daubings, engraved by furrows
and holes, are viewed as curious writing.
Light and shadows are watched through
the microscope where the least spot is
as big as the Earth itself.

*****
Today’s prompt courtesy of Beth Ayer on Found Poetry Review:

“In the spirit of heading into darkness after all things unseeable and obscure, write a poem using a text that is inexplicable to you. Could be quantum physics, thermodynamics, mathematics, aeronautical engineering – or something else altogether that to you speaks in incomprehensible language. Choose a text or texts and begin selecting words and phrases as they spark associations. Write a poem using the collected words and phrases. Let your imagination fire, and don’t worry about what these terms mean in their original context.”

My source:

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Micrographia, by Robert Hooke

By the Council of the ROYAL SOCIETY of London
for Improving of Natural Knowledge.

Ordered, That the Book written by Robert Hooke, M.A. Fellow of this Society, Entituled, Micrographia, or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies, made by Magnifying Glasses, with Observations and Inquiries thereupon, Be printed by John Martyn, and James Allestry, Printers to the said Society.

Novem. 23. 1664.