Common Ground
To have a mailbox on the road
is to know good government,
delivering what’s mine and yours
rain or shine. To have a zip code,
a state, when countless stateless people
have no protection conferred by law
confers a protection I take for granted,
delivering daily its imperfect
form of the common good
to those who have an address,
whom chance didn’t bomb into statelessness.
* * * * *
Eating Greenland
This year, Nina chose, for her birthday’s theme,
climate change. Dressed as a sperm whale,
one guest explained the melting ice sheet;
a costumed glacier reported on
the average 11-degree rise in winter
temperatures. Nina’s sister brought
a birthday cake in the shape of Greenland,
the icy, snow-covered, central region
coated with whirled coconut shavings.
Immortal Jellyfish plunged a knife
into the cake, like a Cold War scientist
extracting a core of ancient ice for Camp
Century. Secret subsurface trenches hid
a nuclear reactor and dorms for soldiers
building missile sites. Should Russia strike.
In 1965, they abandoned the lab and its toxic
waste, beneath collapsing walls of melt. This year,
we ate Greenland, piece after sparkling piece.
* * * * *
Thirst
I thought I was finished with beauty,
having shed — given away, or sold — so much
and committed myself
to necessary objects only. Ready,
I thought, for the journey to simplicity,
to matters of the soul.
But when I saw a tiny reproduction
of Eleanor Ray’s Snowy Owl, 2020,
(6 ½ x 8 inches, oil on panel)
I had to have it — bone, eyes, turbulence,
appetite — little bird,
little hunger on the dune.