NORTH OF WUPATKI

Later, where junipers gnarl and contort

like a lapsed forest on sun-hammered

hardpan, you hear wind settle down, hear

high desert subsiding to one great quietude

this whole plateau seems to float on.  It's then

at the hour when grand stone-ripened times

grow familiar as bat-flitter, Arizona's

pastels turn around, walking steadily off

into a nightfall that kindles the evening star

for your campfire.  As if desert mesas prefer

being listened to that way, constellations

rising behind them do seem to draw nearer

and burn more sincerely for never saying how far

they might take you.  Yet you know yourself

native there, along with the one, the many,

the forever.  And, in a hush uttered by nothing

but everything named “creation,” a canyon wren

singing to the silence it came from.

“North of Wupatki” First appeared in Poetry (Chicago)

WAKE ME

Consider just one sacral tableau: three nails

or so to drain a god.  And how, ever after,

the infidel corpses have piled up

thick as centuries.  Even as we speak

holy slaughters accrue and conspire

till everything’s ancient history

late-breaking all over the place.

Nudged by the just thud of humanitarian

bombs it may seem that our national heart

like an angry red planet keeps hurling

itself against the gates of strange cities

yet for all our wise sayings preserved

in alcohol, it’s the old story’s bitter end

returned to fresh beginnings.

Victims flee riding any old thing, school buses,

farm carts.  The very roads become refugees

as under the remote control of Holy Writ

fear, misery, and rage take turns

swallowing each other

as the righteous connive at scenarios

even sacred books couldn’t worsen.

Small wonder the gods have all sailed

off the edge of the world, but how lucky for us

these opposable thumbs evolved just in time

to help carry our grudges.

Meanwhile, none of the other planets fidget

or fuss, they merely roll round and around

like ball bearings.  But here?

The global soldier is earth-colored,

both what he wears and lies in,

with man crawling toward man

across rival axioms.  As each aims and fires

at a difference in cloth, each wins the day,

in dragging by rope naked elders to the quarry.

Wake me when eternity starts, will you?

I don’t want to miss it.                                                                   

“Wake Me” First appeared in War, Literature & the Arts