So much death and pain today: slaughtered fowls,
reminders of genocide and oppression, celebration
of abundance denied to billions. Cousin, did you know
400,000 Ethiopians are suffering famine?
At what time the fog took over, I do not know:
I was, if not sleeping, attempting to, tossing
and turning like a Heron’s wing, lost in fog.
Love, like light, has no mass, is information.
Not that which is found in books, newspapers,
sacred texts: Suns laugh at our quest for
knowledge. Imagine a poem with no beginning
or end, no author or reader, words or meaning—
A week of coughing and fitful sleep.
Pigeons at war over the allocation
of crumbs. Irretrievable hours spent
before a screen, shades drawn tight
to keep out the glare—and still my eyes
are sore, my back.
I do not nap unless I’m deathly sick:
the day is for working, not rest;
only at night can we touch, flame to wick.
Midway through, I open my laptop to write. No matter
how cramped, unpleasant, flying is flying. Over the Rockies,
above the smog, the drying-out Colorado, the fires—sky in every
direction. How not to find inspiration?
What momentary peace in the yard!–The peach tree straining under the weight of its fruit, the sound of water giving itself to gravity. I stir my coffee and breathe. A solitary ant scampers about my foot; in no mood for […]
I slept poorly, but rose at dawn to tend to my garden.
First I wrapped the world’s largest tree in aluminum.
Then I trucked seventeen million salmon to the sea.
Jeff Bezos did not leave the planet any better than
he found it, though he is rich enough to leave it and
return, alive. As I watch the skies, greedy mosquitos
stalk me like a herd of tiny buffalo.
My early poems aspired to Keats and Blake;
were about magic, dreams, and heartbreak.
Most rhymed, were trite, and told more than showed;
rolled off the tongue, no taste of the acid down below.