Each reproduction is at best a reminder
of an originating production.
The latter by definition is elusive
(well, not “by definition,” but by the nature
of poiesis, of human creation,
which works mostly by hindsight and after the fact…),
posited in spite of not being positive
in the sense of a foreseen, foreknown whole
that reciprocally determines its own parts
according to some quasi-Platonic blueprint.
I tell myself, each time I play it back,
“The original is a lost and brokedown shack.”
And, just the same, its condition was never mint.
I see it every time I reproduce:
another car ‘twixt Eden and this here caboose.