Poetry makes distance come close.
In the eternalized past,
the snows of Leningrad in 1945,
drowned Virginia Woolf, heavy with stones,
never met Akhmatova
among the murdered and starving,
Anna would not wear lipstick or rouge.
Worthless information.
Are they trees or lumber now?
Among the dead, worthless Beauty
sometimes wears makeup.
In the United States court of appeals,
judges refuse to count rivers and trees as persons,
but rule corporations are persons.
The Gods do not want their rights as persons,
they take for granted their immortality.
Aphrodite and Ares dance together
as prose and poetry sometimes do.
Perhaps Artemis, not afraid of lightning,
is afraid of the sun,
that one day will stop shining.
Bit of a leap, in time I want to be a tree
with roots and green leaves—
I’ll be blind, but I love water and sunshine.
I will stare headfirst into the earth.