No one is to blame for anything anymore.
Or is it that everyone is to blame for everything?
Maybe the world has gotten too small: so many billions
of us, incomprehensible to ourselves, let alone
one another, crowded together
long before the stamps commemorating peace,
before factories resumed churning out grenades,
some made off with blueprints for conquest,
taped them to the walls of their dreams
I’ve been unkind to the ants swarming
the plates I left unwashed: stamped a
a few dozen to death, left the others
scurrying, confused, and hungry
By where we put out the trash
there is a fragrant orange tree.
On Monday mornings the street
smells of fresh fruit and rotted fruit
I read poems on a bench in unexpected heat,
winter-pale skin growing pink, then red,
like a sunset spreading across me.
Suppose I grant you the premise of your question.
Should I gather up my limbs at once
and build something immortal with them?
What could I construct to outlast
the drowsy calm of this moment?
Three-hours and $300 in legal fees into working on a resolution for my nonprofit to add “Inc” to its name in order to complete a filing with the State of Connecticut, I step to the window, standing there like a […]
Sort the mail. Wash the dishes. Turn off the lights.
Set your alarm to rise before the rooster.
Dying is but another errand to run.
Out of the blue our three-year-old
declares he doesn’t like the elephant.
For days he repeats—unbidden, as if recalling
a nightmare—that he doesn’t like the elephant.
Every year the same poem, the same
lament, the same sickness. What if
things don’t get better, merely more
tolerable? What if we lay down our
lives and nothing grows over us—