Words from Maine South

Driving south from Maine,
the hills simmering with color
as the leaves close their arms upon
their bodies.

_____________another year, another war
added to those already ongoing.
There is a list somewhere, but most
have lost count by now.

_____Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq,
random points on the map.
Military occupation in 145 countries.
The heart cannot count that high.
We're like the leaves. Its autumn.
We're cold, and tired and ready
for winter.

'Give me a threshold. if aliens
attacked us and poisoned every
river so it was unsafe to drink from,
if they put dioxin, a lethal carcinogen,
into every mothers breast milk...'
Aspen, oak and ash race as by one
giving up the ghost. The sky
blessedly clear after a morning's
hard rain. the earth spins.

'Would you fight back?
If the aliens put acid in the oceans,
if they killed 98% of all the friends
and neighbors you know, would you fight
back. If there was a resistance, would you
join?
If you can't or won't give a threshold,
even to yourself, why not?'



Is there some hope of making
a world of sense?

The earth spins by inertia at
this point.

Car after car go south, go north,
all day and night on I-95. What the
hurry is towards no one
has explained, though we've been
told, like dreams, not to question
what we see.

'In 1998, a report was published in Time
Magazine, backed by three main ecological institutions.
They stated that the Earth has lost one-third
of all its natural resources in the last 30 years.
A catastrophe not seen since the time
of the dinosaurs, and it will take millions
of years for the Earth to recover. The main
story of the day, the month, and that year
was not that somewhat dire and prophetic warning
but rather the romantic feats
of linguist Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office.'

A man walks in now. The sound
he no longer listens to, machines,
have stopped humming in his brain.
He's left them instead for rain
and tubas. "There are some facts that
are, to be blunt, more useful
and more telling, and more beyond debate
than others. If all debate begins
by halving the concerns of your
fellow human being, how long
until we get an honest look at
how bad things really are?"

Out on the ocean, sunlight shines
like rain into Squeeker Cove and all
points south on that island. enough
light to loosen the last hard bits
left in the heart.

The world spins by inertia now.

If there were a song, your
beloved would take you down
to the river, as they bathed your head
and sang it to you. Your eyes
might then make a world of sense
from the broken glass we remake with each sunrise.
If the task of seeing is too hard,
do not close your eyes for a moment.
Do not look away, for your eyes have seen
what they have seen, the heart will
feel its own blind way to meaning.

Largest oil spill in US history
destroys massive colonies of pelicans
and cormorants and sea turtles
and bass and marlin. Wetlands
systems put under severe strain
with possible collapse immanent for
crab, shrimp and catfish populations.
Reports say the amount spewed into
The Gulf of Mexico roughly equivalent
to the total spilled every 7 years
for the last half century
into the Niger delta and its
rivers and tributaries and villages from
oil extracted, headed to the global north.

Is there some hope of making
a world of sense?

'From the year 1980 to the year 2003, the
most populous prisons on the planet grew
in size and density. Caged in small rooms, those
being held are most often poor and are disproportionately
black and red and brown and yellow, and, since
the beginning of the decade of the 1980s, the number
of inmates has increased 300%, while the population
at large has increased 30%. This increase was recently
sighted as possibly erasing all gains made by the Civil
Rights Movement, now 2 generations past.'

Outside the bus station, two people get on a bus.
they are old for the journey, and they feel it, but try not
to let the feeling show. Their children laugh with them
and kiss and hug them from the platform. When they
board the bus, the woman's cheeks are trying to hold back
tears of joy, tears of sorrow, as the confusion of being
the ones now leaving sets in. The children sit in a car,
as the rain falls, and flash the headlights as the parents
wave from the bus.

This is for you, whomever
listened for an extra moment
while the heart was tender.
Who tried hard to understand
even when it seemed pointless.
This is for you, when you found
the words for that moment
and no other, when you shaked
off the songs of sorrow and talked
of cooking cornbread instead.
This for you, when you held
a stranger in your arms
and didn't ask what it meant
or for how long, or under what terms.
This for you, may your heart go strong
and listening into the glimmering.

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editorial note: some of the formatting got flattened in blogger. underscores are present here where tabs would normally be.