Sonnet LXXXVII: Audacity

In its demesne the rolling Shinto bell,
your brightest laugh that spikes the screen, the spine
of a dimetrodon, is a design
that's locked in a genetic, verdant cell;
each inhalation's perfect, tapered swell
spreads visible along with its decline--
this tiny, living thing that is not mine,
creating body from a dust-made shell.

I could erase it, cover it with sound,
could amplify, repeat to match my mood,
accompany its tones with tinny psalms.
For all I cannot touch, my hands surround
its boundaries; I hold it here, subdued
in incorporeal yet heated palms.