are nothing compared to the flocks of canadian geese hooting and stomping by the fox river, or tittering hordes of black bodies in bushes that chitter scream
and wrestle, unseen, shivering branches like god’s voice across the parking lot. spring brings a conflagration of feathers, a rising tide of robins on lawns, the cardinals’ call and
response across campus, and bully crows shredding the house finches’ nests. if birds are psychopomps, ferrying messages back from the dead, whose indignant complaints
rain down from the trees? whose warnings follow me from car to sidewalk to sagging Hall, where empty corridors and crucifixes glow dully, and wordless, in ancient yellow light?
somehow we started talking about girl on girl aggression, how starting young we divide and conquer ourselves, exiling those who don’t follow unwritten dress codes, and others with bodies that bloom too soon and glorious,
or those who say too much about fairness or justice. it’s shameful how we act as patriarchal gatekeepers at nine and eleven and seventeen, gleeful and righteous as we embroider bloody As on innocent chests, pouring
poison into ears primed for it, spraying it over the internet, spitting the toxic brew on our friends and allies in a mist disguised as sugar kisses. all this struggle over the fickle interest of bromancing boys seduced by games that will
never include us. perhaps we have earned, now, our lives of quiet alienation, our empty houses, our pecking card parties where -- gray and bent, shuffling alone toward oblivion -- we hide behind cold smiles, dealing each other losing hands.
“a shape with lion body and the head of a man,” ...
oh sphinx, you know better, don’t you? not a man but a woman, yes -- massive, stately, majestic, poised stone and magnificent in the desert imagination, jutting up from sere red dirt -- you hold the busy noise
of two thousand years in your massive mouth. all around you “civilization” swirls and dies, clouds scudding through hot skies. you survive famine, drought, pestilence, war, petty gods and their humans. as loud
as extinction, your enduring silence roars on the edge of our history, invention, struggle. the perfect marriage of creation, predator, goddess, monument, religions slide off your immovable haunches. wordless, you disparage
our attempts to stave off the inevitable, our puny deaths, our desiccation, our return to rock, and sand, and breath.
maybe this is what’s at the backs of our minds -- some vast image, some supernatural notion welling up at last in the collective unconscious -- a demon spawned in underground rivers
of lava and arsenic and radiation, earth blood bubbling at impossible temperatures, taking on insane weight and intention, and rising now like a vengeful golem created to collect on our
massive debts. certainly, some of us are waiting for this reckoning to arrive; some of us suspect an incredible bill has come due, and the gods we raised will refuse to save us, and (in short) we are
screwed. no prayers, no words, no magic will suffice. this is how ou world will end: not in ice but in fire.
the worst are full of passionate intensity
we all know what this means and so
I won’t belabor the point
invent your own images
to prove the case
and for once I will fall back
into happy abstraction
Not that you care, but today I’m feeling groggy, disoriented, sleepy, and vaguely disgruntled. It’s like all of the joy and hope I felt yesterday has left me with a hangover.
the best lack all conviction
wandering, alone, dazed and confused
in hedge mazes hewn from legal speak and
wishful thinking. They stumble into dead
ends and queer sand traps, gopher holes
to snap their ankles, and hear the echoes of
faroff voices, rising and falling like waves,
over the clink of expensive silverware,
the music of casual laughter, a muted
string quartet.
No wonder they lose all sense
of direction and purpose, faced with such
frustration, turning
over and over into blind alleys
lined with vicious branches, prevarications
on a single theme of entrapment.
Now, as it gets dark, it seems
that distant party has been thrown only
as a mirage,
to torture these best few
with the hope of release;
this game works to keep these last
persistent seekers circling
endlessly back to the center,
where a sarcastic bronze statue,
mottled with age and cast
long ago with the name TRUTH across its base,
poises over an empty fountain,
pissing air into air.
This guy loves cheesy cards and making fine cuisine. He’s a kitchen singer, a fish tickler, and a goofball extraordinaire. I am DAMN LUCKY to be hitched to him for life.
And Now for Something Completely Different
or
Eclipse Birthday Poem for Dave
Nature’s celebrating you today, slipping the moon
in front of the sun, as if to somehow highlight your
inner brilliance. Because you shine, darling, blaze
in my imagination whenever I’m asked to “set an
intention” or figure out all I’m grateful for -- like our
friend Petty sort of sings, I got lucky, babe, when
I finally met you, there on the U of A breezeway,
third time the charm. True confession: I recognized
your light from the first but refused, twice, to let it
in, suffering my own emotional eclipse, craving
the pain of inauthenticity and rejection, closing my eyes
against unconditional connection. But here you are,
34 years later -- partner, heart, infinite source of
warmth, love, life -- never any moon between us.
