"I look all night but you swim with flow charts written miles from here." -Julie Doxsee, from Objects for a Fog Death

Well I Don’t Know

All the birds are coming together

converging is a better word

for the piles of bird-food

only that these aren’t piles of bird-food

I try to tell them

these are hundreds

of rabbits

these are bears

all hibernating

these are different types of trees

growing in the forest

this is me and this

is my shadow

this is your finger

and it’s in your nose

the birds don’t understand me

they all swoop down

hawks vultures penguins pigeons chickens

every bird

and they start

with the rabbits and bears

the forest is devoured

soon enough

you’re devoured

soon enough

and now all the birds are

advancing on me slowly

the kings of this new world

covered in bird shit

and I pray that they don’t eat me

but I wish they would just eat me

"Yet later in our place an ugly toad half-opens its thick eyelid and one sees clearly: 'That's me.'" -Czeslaw Milosz, from Facing the River

Tea Leaves

Don’t be afraid when

all the orange leaves

float up and affix themselves

back on their tree

the trees will shrink

to saplings

and disappear

this will happen

with frogs as well

they’ll become tadpoles

and shrink into nothingness

old men will feel rejuvenated

and start running around the park

and when they see their reflection

in the metal slide they’ll be surprised

to see themselves as children

a bit later they’ll be embryos

and will then become single cells

and then they won’t even be that

everything that happened

will unhappen on this earth

couples will go back to their

puppy-love days before arguments

mountains will shrink into hills

birds will develop egg shells

around themselves

the only thing that won’t change

is the clouds

they will grow and shrink

storms will form and dissipate

as always

this was all their mistake

anyway

"I happened to myself in these very woods." -Joshua Marie Wilkinson, from Selenography

Marathon Man

There was a slow explosion

right behind me

I decided to run

and I left

the slow explosion behind

I met a woman

and had a family

and we got a dog

but then the slow explosion

caught up to me

and swallowed my family whole

I decide to run again

for longer this time

so that maybe the slow

explosion wouldn’t catch up again

so that maybe it wouldn’t know

where to find me

I ended up at the beach

and I bought myself a nice beachside

property and there were palm trees

and I drank daiquiris every day

I lived there for many years

until the slow explosion caught up

and swallowed the property

the drinks and the wait staff whole

I began to feel selfish for running

because in the chase

the explosion had claimed

so many innocent lives

so I faced the slow explosion

and noticed that it wasn’t an explosion at all

it was hundreds of trees

all growing like wild-fire

with autumn leaves that looked

like wild-fire

and they were all hungry for blood

they ate me up

and I became one of them

a slow exploding tree

and I was finally with my family

and the wait staff again

and we are all hungry for blood