Richter Scale
If this were a crowd-sourced blueprint for the resistance,
it would tell you what action to take, but it won’t,
it can’t, isn’t, I’m afraid, built that way. It wants,
instead, to daydream, to remember a sunset
when a bevy of deer vogued in the meadow,
all looking up at the same time while grazing,
all five tilting their heads at the same angle,
their tails held up like rattles about to twitch.
I scroll news the way my father followed stocks,
sensitive to the smallest tremor.
A seismograph, a lie-detector needle, my pen,
its doodles on the scratch pad. In slow motion,
who can tell which way things will fall? History,
in real time. The deer scatter when I blink.
* * * * *
Reverberance
Rubbed with beeswax paste
to a high soothing shine —
these walls, sharply planed,
slightly curved. The surface
of the plaster, as if lit
from within and windswept,
like a gypsum dune.
Inside windswept is wept.
Reaching down, the weeping
willow’s branches swept
the gravel of our tears —
willows at the old house
and those particular tears
past their known impact.
Here, the apricot bears fruit.
Bear scat gums the long grass.
Where horses used to graze,
deer doze and when they flee
our dogs, knick their hooves
on the hollow iron gate
that rings like an idiophone
and reverberates through
the dogs’ barking, through
the house and the sounds
we make living in it, the clatter
and chatter, the electronics —
slaying noise, piercing silence,
a prayer cymbal’s clean strike.
* * * * *
No News
At least back then you could benignly neglect
politics and it wasn’t at your mortal peril,
or so we liked to pretend. Not like now
when we live to see the change change back,
ideals — decency — humanity — restored.
General derision at the state of things,
anguish sometimes, fear, disgust,
and there’s plenty to do but what exactly —
nothing, except chip away: claw-chisel
at massive stone. You want to trust in
the truths you were taught growing up,
values the worth of which you understand.
No news is good news, none of it,
and it’s never no news, it’s only not knowing.