Just above the Swamp

The thoughts remind themselves
Of the single-engine
Propeller planes buzzing

In the low skies around
The recreational,
Single-hangar airport

By the swamp, fifty years
Ago, the way they drone
In big, lazy circles,

Rarely really going
Anywhere, even though,
Unlike the planes, the thoughts

Aren’t making drowsy sounds,
Only making themselves
Drowsy before crashing.

Revere the Grayest Pile

How best to commemorate
The end of what you know when

It’s a race between you and
What you know as to which ends

First? It seems too typical,
The prophet’s deathbed warning

About the dire times to come.
The warning’s for the prophet.

For the collective, the line
Of all lives hunger-braided,

Even massive extinctions
Come along in the middle.

The prophet could imagine
Permians leading Edens.

Hard Weather

Someone noted that the worst

Thing about dictatorship

Was its arbitrariness—

Anything could happen at

Any point—and it struck you

How much dictatorship was

Like the ordinary world,

Dictators like the seasons,

Promising orderliness

In succession they never

Really provided. People

Bought into the promises

And then, inevitably,

Arbitrary storms occurred,

Or droughts followed by flash floods,

And that promise of order

Only sharpened the longing,

Being forever deferred.

For Sorrow Near I Did Not Look

Every day, someone defies the odds
And has some rare bad thing visit them—
The earthquake arrives in their village,

Their particular, quiet village,
Or the fire sweeps through, or the flash flood,
The rockfall, even the meteor

Picks out the roof under which they sleep
And smashes it in on them. Not you,
Never you so far, maybe never

You ever. After all, how many do you know
Of your personal acquaintances
Who were crushed in a fogbound pile-up

Or hit by proverbial lightning?
If you’re not in a war zone and not
Used to living in harm’s way, you sleep

And dream your nightmares of disasters
Which you expect to fade when you wake,
But last night someone defied the odds.