A Letter to Ted & Dan

France to Michigan

Just another plane trip

with the mind wandering

at large in the bowels

of life. How am I to land this?

At Godthåb, above Greenland,

we’re disappointing compared to the immensity

of our scientific reality, the trillions

of unresolved particles, though there were

those improbable unrecorded celebrations,

over a million at the samba festival,

a thousand bands, a million doves

eaten raw because there was no wood for fire,

an immense dance with no words with nonstop

loving in the fashion of lions and porpoises.

Off in the jungle anacondas perked up their heads

and slowly moved toward the music,

the largest snake of all wrapped around

the world’s waist, holding us together

against our various defilements, our naive

theocracies at war with one another.

Almost forgot that, over Iceland,

seven miles below I saw children

sledding in the first snow of the year,

small as motes of dust on silver-edged

sleighs, the glistening of the frosted sweat

of the shaggy pony that pulled them

back up the hill. I’ve long wondered

at the way certain children, even babies,

decide to become songbirds because they could see

the endless suffering in their future.

They’ve been using this method for centuries.

I’ve asked the French government,

Richelieu in fact, for the use of a one-room

cabin in the Dordogne where I can recreate

the local origin of man in this birthplace

of the Occident, riding the spear

of the Occident into the future, the iron horse

that makes us glue the life of mankind

together with blood.

In France I went to a place

of grandeur though it was only

a thicket as large as the average hotel room.

I learned that we’ll float into eternity

like the dehydrated maggots I saw

in Mexico around the body of a desert tortoise

missing an interior that had fled

seven days before. How grand.

For after death I’ve been given

the false biblical promise of smoking privileges

and the possession of hundreds of small

photos of all the dogs and women I’ve known.

The beasts (the plane and I) land on earth.

Time for a hot dog and a small pizza.

I glance at the mellifluous rubbing

of a melancholy woman’s buttocks.

I tell her to celebrate her tears.