Judicious Design
We arrive judiciously designed to shimmer
with the energy of the sun. Working with wild medicines
leads us to the mountain, the steep climb
past the braided bark of black locust. A sense of belonging,
of walking with golden steps.
We learn to spot claw marks. Not
a one-way relationship.
Circling overhead, the purple moon in a flirty skirt that flies up
to reveal white thigh. Below, earth’s parched carapace, prickled
and cracked, leaking unspeakables, the ocean
a milky vat.
There are wild places where we may tread. Just because
we are there does not mean
we have been invited. Our hair snags
on withered branches as the wind whispers in our ear, a message
from another world.
Lucky Ducks
The world used to be a roomy place. How small it’s become, how pinched, how tightly squeezed in we are. That peachy juice that used to dribble down our chins? Where has that gone? Remember how we didn’t want to miss the tiniest drop, so sweet and sticky it was, tasting of summer and grass and four-leaf clovers and scratchy hay bales and apple cider and suntan lotion that smelled of coconuts.
Remember how we used to be smart, ask each other clever riddles and make hilarious jokes and laugh like hyenas even when those riddles and jokes weren’t really that funny? I can’t even remember any now, can you? When did that happen? When did we forget the riddles and the jokes?
Remember lining up at the fairground booths? All the world was a fairground — candy floss and toffee apples, carousels and bumper cars, gigantic spinning tea cups, chained chairs flying wide, shooting plastic ducks for an oversized panda. The shooting continues — oh yes, it continues, but plastic ducks are no longer involved. They must be relieved. The world is a roomy place for plastic ducks now. Lucky ducks.
