Sunset’s Slow Burn

Given lives are built to end
And suffering discovers
The soft parts of each of them,

It feels like everyone should
Be forgiven for living,
But humans can be such shits

Sometimes, harming and killing
Each other, in teams, no less,
Squads of angry viciousness,

And self-righteousness, and greed.
And all the bad folks are loved
By their own teams, while the good

Folks keep turning out to be
Bad folks also, if not worse.
Oh not you, the words repeat,

Not you, of course. You want peace.
Still you find yourself shaking
And fantasizing justice,

So rarely really justice,
More like violent revenge.
Why should they be forgiven

Who do such things with living?
You and your allies must win!
Each day, night begins again.

Pollarded Cottonwood

Which facts matter to you? Which
Daydreams are you rooting for?
Ronald Reagan, grinning, framed,

Beams from his own quotation
About never giving up
Your guns. He guards the motel

Counter in Caliente,
Nevada, its mines long closed,
Where the palatial, stuccoed

Passenger depot sheds flakes
Each time Union Pacific
Freight hoots by. The Hot Springs Inn

Shut down because of Covid,
But Patty’s Motel’s open.
Monica will check you in.

The rooms are tiny but clean,
And here’s the WiFi password.
Steep sunset lights the sharp hills.

The pollarded cottonwood
Glows in November glory,
Spartan and all but leafless.

The Senses of a Rocky Planet

Saturn’s rotating hurricane
It wears for hexagonal hat
Could swallow Earth four times over.

That’s every life that ever was,
Drop in one storm’s bucket of gas
On a nearby fellow planet.

Earth shivers and takes more pictures.
Some of Earth is building a new
Eye to fling out there to keep watch.

Earth’s working on ringed ears as well,
Just under its skin, to sense waves
So vast they could swallow the Sun.

Also, many more robot probes.
Earth can’t have enough robot probes.
What’s the metaphor for this? What?

Earth can only find tropes in itself,
Germ in a lab dish, spores adrift,
Deep sea lights, a cry in the night.

Words Wake

So Iron John died
After a long life,
Combative writer,
Intense reviser,
Shadow far from us

Unspooling in our
Anonymity,
Who aren’t fighters, nor
Lovers, nor talking
Stick men. Rest In peace,

Frequent translator,
Poet against war.
After funerals
Of such esteemed hosts,
Bereft words gather

With slices of cake
Or cups of coffee,
Maybe just a splash
Of whiskey in them,
By the green sofa

In sunlit dust motes,
Away from the main
Clusters of mourners,
To chat and discuss,
Perhaps to compare.

Centriliminal

In the middle of the edge between
Night and day, poverty and a wealth
Of numbers, mysterious digits

Suddenly linked to a legal name,
Swiftly transforming identity
Without touching one cell of the beast,

A dream decides to make its own words,
Grade schooler with scissors and paper.
What would a meteor think about

In that one, all-consuming moment
As a dust speck in the atmosphere
Burning to disappear? Think that, then.