The box jiggled, as if to call a dog,

recalled a riddle, that was only posed 

in response to its own late solution:

Will a completion reimposed bypass 

the cognitive burden that is newness,

reconfiguring a puzzle become

less a painstaking effort to locate 

fractions of a head-scratching absence as 

memorizing the products of matched sets 

of projections and sockets? Yes and yes;

and learning not but how to wisely learn,

heartening, as every piece connected 

simplifies the task remaining, limits 

possibilities, until there are none.