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January,
2009
TREE OF
HEAVEN
Ailanthus sprout in the dark seam
between stoop and walk:
You will grow,
feed on
concrete,
suck protein from
rusting reinforcing
wire.
In time your trunk will open
a crevasse;
the steps, a broken pyramid leaning
inward,
will press upon the house,
the aggressive
snuggle of a willful child.
Silhouetted stairways will open
along the brick
foundation. Rivulets
of martian dust will smear the
whitewash
and pile up below, hills
ready-made
for ants, who will climb
the pitted face,
tiny mountaineers.
One day the
house itself, sighing,
will slump from its sill, tumble
ever so gently
down the hillside, into the river
below
like an origami box in the
wind.
FORECAST
Night sky white:
fills me with cold
fright.
Night sky red:
visions
of a city dead.
Night sky
black:
the end,
no turning
back.
WE WERE
NOT COMELY
We were not comely
nor
skilled in all the
arts of hunt or
dance
Cowering in our huts
outside the
village fence
coaxing from the ground such
meagerness
as could provide
each generation with
enough, no
more,
or urge from some clan
pathetic as our own a
mate
and so sustain the sorry cycle
All day we
argued
picked at one another
making words
invoking
laws
creators gods
anything by whose power
we could
imagine
ourselves redeemed
In time our words
leached
out our walls
and poisoned
their paradise
driving them
to beg from us clarity
to justify their
fear and
draw courage from their
own reflected
hopes
And so we sanctified
their terrors and
ordained
a world of what we told them
to call love
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