Birds acquaint themselves with leaves.
Hired hands roll up their sleeves.
In a brick malodorous dorm
boys awake awash in sperm.
Clouds of patently absurd
but endearing shapes assert
the resemblance of their lot
to a cumulative thought.
As the sun displays its badge
to the guilty world at large,
scruffy masses have to rise,
unless ordered otherwise.
Now let’s see what one can’t see
elsewhere in the galaxy:
life on earth, of which its press
makes a lot and comets less.
As a picture doomed to sneak
previews only, it’s unique
even though some action must
leave its audience aghast.
Still, the surplus of the blue
up on high supplies a clue
as to why our moral laws
won’t receive their due applause.
What we used to blame on gods
now gets chalked up to the odds
of small particles whose sum
makes you miss the older sham.
Yet regardless of the cause,
or effects that make one pause,
one is glad that one has been
caught this morning in between.
Painted by a gentle dawn
one is proud that like one’s own
planet now one will not wince
at what one is facing, since
putting up with nothing whose
company we cannot lose
hardens rocks and—rather fast—
hearts as well. But rocks will last.
1996