The whole blessed universe was steam
and density until the crucial moment
came, and blam! a billion billion different
ways to go, one of them this hawk, building up
tension for a dive. As when:
(1) a column of smoke breaks into chaos,
(2) you know you married the wrong man,
(3) in Casablanca, Rick sends Ilsa away,
to save the world.
“We’ll always have Paris.” Ha. Hold
one pose long enough, birds fly off branches.
The hawk barely shifts.
Somewhere below, a mouse, maybe,
holds perfectly still, feels the change of air.
It loves its life. The hawk loves its life.
The hawk loves the mouse. At the last,
the mouse looks straight into the eye
of doom, is eaten by its doom, becomes
its doom, no doubt is in love with it, now
that it’s all doom itself.
It’s the bipolar universe, off meds,
where all the excitement is. Ego, superego, id,
out to destroy each other, then growing all mushy
at the final moment when Good seems to have won out
over various Evils, which is an anagram for Elvis.
Elvis, had he lived, might have been like Mick Jagger,
still a bad boy at sixty-three, but singing flat.
Watch him dance on the far edge, headed for
chaos. We’re all quivering on a black-hole’s edge.
The difference between falling in and not
is one to the fifteenth decimal place, and
it does no good to hold your breath.