variations on "shipbuilding (foundation"

really digging this line, liberated from rob mclennan's "shipbuilding (foundation":

i pictured a lemon, the shape
of an hour

there's something pleasing, impossible though plausible, emphatic in my readings -- picturing a lemon and then, after that, the hour's shape; picturing an hour in the shape of a lemon. as though a lemon could be at all suggestive of an hour, on either front. the collision of the shape of an hour (most readily, the hourglass) with the juicy, rotund fruit. how this unspoken collision dangles in the space after hour, a thought unfinished, a mouth open and contemplative.

how enjoyable to have hours as lemons. pithy. yellow. fresh. how enjoyable to picture a thing as a foundation, a basis: step one.

the past tense gratuitous or startling? having pictured, the viewer becomes stuck again in a similar state of aphasia that hit her when she first pictured an hour as a lemon. she pictured nothing after this or the picture extended into the uncharted spaces of her mind.

the line echos in the space where the thought pauses without punctuation, incomplete.

the title, too, i like, with its un-ended parentheses. curvature. what echos beyond. i'm a sucker for shipbuilding. and yet there's something so matter-of-fact, daily routine about the remainder of the poem, its curiosities stuck in punctuated blips and sanctioned to starts and ends. i wonder what would happen if this poem became several poems. if there was 1) a poem that existed in its entirety as it currently does. if 2) a poem read of just the title and the quoted lines above. if 3) a poem continued on the concept of lemons and hours. if 4) other parts of the poem were exploded out to explore their worlds... what of ", a question of lies"; where could a poem expand around this line? where would a poem of "by..." lines wander? a poem of "i was, i read, i could, i pictured" etc.?