She wakes in panic and in several inches of water.
Through her penthouse windows all she sees is sea.
She ties her hair back. She wades across her terrace.
She boards her yacht. ‘Cast off,’ she tells her crew.
Her crew, a golden retriever, thumps its tail.
She gets the engines started. She singles up the lines.
She lets them slip. ‘We’re underway,’ she says.
‘Decisions,’ she tells her crew. It thumps its tail.
I see the eyes of everyone I knew
regarding me from somewhere out of sight.
I hear their voices say something true
but I can’t believe I’ve heard their words just right.
Belief is not required, they say, for facts
like this one: what’s created can’t be lost.
Believing does not change this, nor do acts,
they say, of piety or blasphemy
that cost nothing that the truth cannot afford.
They say the cost of ignorance is mine,
that it only makes me restless, tired and bored,
but that on learning more I’ll see the line of light
that writes this message through the haze:
Death is not immortal. It’s a phase.
The Ark of Noah saves us from the flood
of death brought to the Earth by our sort’s rise.
In each part of the planet where life stood
till we arrived, we’ve ushered in demise
of all the native creatures large and small
that we could catch. That’s sadly nearly all.
We humans torched Australia where we slew
the diprotodon, the giant kangaroo,
birds big as houses, wombats tall as me,
the marsupial lion, and every sort of tree
that fire brought low. We helped the eucalyptus
out of ignorance. Not much of nature likes us.
I could go on. We think we can go on
in our ark that sails the dying seas. How long?
they shine the sun on rats by lifting covers
and tell themselves they represent the sun
they bomb the little children and their mothers
we stay inside our restaurants having fun
and me i spend my life hide in the shallows
and nothing make me stand up grab a gun
like i live forever i avoid the gallows
while the others’ childrens’ bones bleach in the sun
they say they had to shoot john get him down
get him quiet and leave the loonies lone
nobody has to shoot i stay home drown
my conscience front an altar carved from bone
i getting crazy hearing voices whisper
put my head in pillows peek but don’t walk out
like i waiting for a benediction vespers
the whispers work they way up to a shout
Grey shells
on walk, fresh spread
for summer’s tourist surge,
await, as for a million years,
my tread.
They shriek
and grab and push
always for new. Plump trash-
family children in last year’s
bright colours.
Jobs came
first in our plans;
we moved from place to place
to end atop the pyramid.
Jobs went.
Cinquains
pop hot and fresh:
full tubs of froth and salt
in splendid form, tasty and warm
then flat.
What have
you seen the cat
consume or ferret take?
What slaking gifts hung by the shrike,
o path?
Thursday. The Old Bell on Rembrandtplein.
A pint of Guinness taken for the rain
and one because the wan electric fire
won’t warm, and one to help me stave off dire
poems that I’ve been reading ’cause I can’t
compose their betters, stopping in mid-rant
to glom the middle distance where my glasses
of Guinness focus, conjuring up lasses
inviting gambols in the hops and mead.
It really isn’t sentencing I need
nor parsing, paraphrasing or strong drink.
I need the rain to stop, the sea to shrink
and show a bridge that I can walk across
to beaches blessed with sand of old-pearl gloss
and damsels who appreciate my song
especially on these days the notes are wrong
and the rains repel me, poisoning the well
of songs I want to sing in The Old Bell.
Earth Tourist 