So much shoved into
the small box of decorum
every wrong move
unchecked reaction packed
tightly under a lid
that always pinches.
What makes that whimpering
audible only at night
when the neighborhood
and the house quell noise?
Quiet. It’s nothing but
the compressed cosmos
of what we daren’t say.
The neighbor’s dog voices his dismay at the closed door.
Clouds have arrived from the flooded South.
Reversed grounds: earth, yellow with sunny constellations of goldenrod,
sky irregularly dyed, washes of ultramarine and drab-watered sunlight.
A playwright’s death, a bombing near Kabul, a loved one’s cancer—
robins and jays make no commentary.
Thumb-sized hummingbird perches on the wire fence, pinch of gray
and paler gray as she visits late tomato blossoms.
Just before dawn I heard foxes yipping and barking.
Like mine, their ancestors arrived by ship.
New arrivals, today, turned back at the terminal. I examine the law
with dismay. What does it mean, to be just?
I ponder the differences here, between domestic and wild—
culture, or environment? Too much in play for easy answers.
Today I’m with the dog, feeling his consternation,
the sky’s door shut in my face.
“Human beings invented truth; it remains a largely abstract concept: what else could it be? Until the genuine encounter—for me, that’s mostly been through something in the natural environment, or through art. I think Plato got it wrong, but he gave us much to ponder.
”