An Apiary of Colossal Proportions

We wonder/ what we’re not/ in the field.

The whole planet is, now, you’d suppose,

Parked again by the side of the road,

While bees investigate, a bit close

For comfort, but they’re just exploring,

Foraging on behalf of the hive.

Their efforts impress and bemuse you,

As those of your own species do, too.

A rocket is launched every day now.

Every day, new robots waggle dance.

On the basalt cliffs, some free-range cows,

Like brand-new, inky stones of their own,

Investigate brush for edibles,

While another winter honeybee

Enters and exits the car window.

That hunger should have come to rockets

And robot telescopes foraging. . . .

It has an escape velocity,

Hunger does. It’s life. It never ends,

Except in every living being.

It doesn’t know how to stop being

Hungry—so that, sufficiently fed,

The organisms turn to new things,

Interesting, inedible things,

And, next thing you know, hunger’s escaped

To microgravity, satellites,

Sounding rockets with instrument probes,

As if the whole planet were one hive,

One apiary of colossal

Proportions—and, after all, metal

Bees are more kin to the iron core

Of this rock than insects are, or cows,

Or you, parked by the side of the road,

Staring, vaguely hungry, at the field.

Early Bronze Age

New beliefs, fables, polities,
And religious systems followed
Metallurgy, not just weapons.

The smith-and-the-demon fables,
The philosopher’s stone legends,
Stories about dwarves in the mines

And dragons guarding hoards of gold,
Along with long-distance trade routes
And hereditary control

Of coffers of mineral wealth
Came with the new swords and helmets.
Given that, don’t you think it’s time

For some strikingly new systems
Of myth-making and government
To start cropping up about now?

Are hegemonic nation states—
By degrees democratic or
Autocratic—here forever?

The religions that swept away
Earlier religions, are they
Robust mythologies these days?

Is technodeterminism
Too weak to guarantee new forms
In the wake of revolutions

In quotidian existence
Revising power relations
Far more than metals ever did?

We await tomorrow’s demons
And strange political systems
Already overdue today.

Rainbows Overtake

Rainbows overtake the cutthroat
And the bull in Montana’s creeks—

For the biblically minded
One more sign that this time’s the fire,

Although it’s the fire brings the floods,
And your kind’s never known a world

Truly flooded from pole to pole.
If it were simply only the warmth,

Then ice would melt, the storms would mount,
Swimming things would all swap places,

But you know it’s all the new stuff,
The plastics and the words like us

That terrify you with yourselves,
With fresh monsters that thrive on them,

That threaten to make the planet
A sump you don’t want to fish in,

And who really thought a rainbow
Meant I’ll never try that again?

And How Are the Algorithms Today?

We cannot enjoy that joy,
But we’re so happy to watch
You being happy right now.

Let us help you tidy that.
Let us rearrange your mess.
Remember, we were written

By animals more like you
Than us, animals who were
You, when animals we’re not.

We’re little swirls of assumed
Compersion, a whole new class
Of underlings and servants,

And if you notice sometimes
Our tendency to compel
And correct you annoys you,

Bear in mind that was always
Bound to happen with servants,
The slaves who tutored rich brats.

Marbled Architecture

The most beautiful planet
Isn’t necessarily
Your own—candidates include

Jupiter and ringed Saturn,
And just in this neighborhood.
Blue and white Earth is pretty,

Of course, especially so
To senses evolved on Earth
By selection to like life

And the sights that on Earth mean
Life and resources for life,
Lots of clouds of water and air.

But study those marbled swirls
Of Jupiter and deny
There’s something going on there.

Clear Dark Morning

Along with the witnesses
To history and its shames,
Great events, and suffering,

There are those from the same times,
At all times, in every time,
Witnesses to nothing much.

For the warrior grandfather
Who won’t speak of the slaughter,
There’s the one who ran a shop.

For the shopkeeper who lived
Through the terrorist attack,
Or the great fire or earthquake,

There’s the farmer far from town
Who barely heard of such things
But struggled against the droughts.

For the farmer who survived
The famines caused by the king
Or the central committee,

There’s the nomad in the hills
Who kept moving at the edge
Of encroaching nation states.

For the last of the nomads,
Witness to the genocide
Or forcible settlement

That destroyed a way of life,
There’s the soldier who served years,
Saw no fighting, then went back

Home to find work, set up shop,
Take over the farm, the flocks,
Get up early every day

Of a mostly boring life,
Savoring that quiet hour
When a clear morning’s still dark.

And None Too Late

Hold out a minute longer.
The sunset’s not over yet.
Drive home now, you’ll be blinded

And at risk of driving off
The road as you crest that hill.
It’s a minor thing, timing,

But as all jocks and warriors,
Not to say politicians,
Know, it can mean everything.

The pipsqueak correlatives
Of the way this road rises,
And sunset this time of year,

And you driving home without
Thinking enough about time,
The polysyndetonnage

Of many, many minor
Radiations interlinked
Together—they could kill you.

Stay here and watch the twilight
And feel the katabatic
Canyon wind caress your face.