Service Bear

A comma-lacking headline

Pings around the Internet,

Bandied by algorithms,

Feral, free of proofreading—

Bear dead after attacking

Hospitalizing man—no

Comma between attacking

And hospitalizing man.

So, after the third viewing

Of the exact same headline

On scattered aggregators,

You might think the bear attacked

An odd comic-book villain,

A one-issue B-lister,

The Hospitalizing Man!

Superman’s in hospital,

Thanks to him; whole cities are

Admitted. He’s like a plague.

He’s Hospitalizing Man.

But now a bear’s attacked him,

And it’s beyond him to send

Wildlife straight to ICU.

Man and bear both meet grim ends.

You grin an ironic grin,

Given it’s too late for you,

Already in hospital.

But maybe, if you get out,

This time you won’t have to go

Back in, thanks to the bear who

Chewed Hospitalizing Man.

Afternoon Ramble after an Invalid’s Nap

People are dying all over the place,
At every moment and in every way,
While you pursue your inexorable,

Slow approach to the same destination,
Fascinated with it, as if it were
Singular, significant, important,

When you know it’s not, particularly.
Your daughter has gone to the library
To restock her carousel of novels

In which people die all over the place
But, being fictions, can sometimes can return
To fictional life. You are staying home,

Leaving the books alone for once, dozing
And dreaming of bar charts, color-coded,
Swaying slightly, like city tower blocks

In a moderate quake, the darker stripes
Representing time spent on quiet things,
Brighter bands for hard work and adventures,

The top, muddy, purple-brown band standing
For time spent dying—a fine line for some,
A thick cross-section of core for others.

You wake with a start in afternoon light,
A spill of brilliance across the dark floors.
The bar charts all scatter. While you were out

Many people must have died, many more
Were born. This is the true tree of knowledge--
Quarreling recipes bear the same fruit.