Cosmogony
The Great Barrier Reef
I am thinking how pain
fills a space and then leaves it empty
just as time pockets itself
into the universe,
that little purse of nothing
we steal without knowing,
like boys who leave a woman dead
for twenty-three cents, all she had,
or like gout which fills
the rich leg with wine,
and leaves a skin empty
as a voided shell.
I am thinking of the strange names
we give to money, dough, bread--
how much have I eaten,
how much left?
I want to leave a nautilus
with its nowhere
divided into visible cells
chamber before chamber:
a slide show–the coliseum,
the gardens, the little tattoo shop
on the corner. It’s this simple–
a white expanse on a blue day
whirling into the next galaxy
with an index to every separate space.
Pack Rat
Poor pinch, I say,
filch everything:
the foil, the felt,
the chicken bone
I carried in my pocket
when I was young,
the one that won
my second wish,
the ferris wheel.
Take the ring, the silk,
the silver seed.
Hide it where
you hide
all that taints
and glitters,
the diamond stud
and desperate fling.
Take it to that nest
you enter
and reenter
with all your trips
and sallies,
packs and fleeces.
Oh, the tongue’s
a tacky cheat,
but see
how she feels
her way
through dark passages.
Poor swipe, I say,
how dense, how deep
your take,
that little brood
from whence
you buzz,
that ragged clutch
lined with light
so cagily.
What the Elephant Sings
Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary, India
I destroy
what sustains–
the grass, the trees–
as you have
taught me,
little man with a mouth.
I have learned
the thirty words
that enslave.
I spread the world
over my body–
the mud, the sea–
my brother lost his trunk.
He kneels to eat,
and soon he starves.
It has been years
since dressed in blue stones
I carried the queen.
What the Phoenix Sings to the Ashes
Pompeii, Italy
Let me tell you
how the world remains:
the tortoise balances
two tomes on his spine–
the book of Seneca
and the book of pins.
If you thumbtack your triptych
to Vesuvius, you can not flee.
Even Pliny explains
the lover’s three hesitations:
stay, stay here and you will stay
lineaments cased in gray desire.
Now it is raining.
Now a woman is talking to me–
she will keep her envelope
flecked with ash.
What the Polar Bear Sings
Hudson Bay, Canada
White on white, the slip
of midnight clouds
on midnight snow
the stretch of arctic ice
floe to floe
and the waiting
at the breaks
where the seal rises
to bask and breathe.
I walk miles
for the occasional meal,
the black snout
nudging death,
the long sleep
through summer–
that living off
what I can store
of white despair
while those darker brutes
black and grizzly
wander at the edges
of the light I bear.
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