Texas Roaches
That steamy night, three of them came, lugging
their amber carapaces like too old, too heavy
luggage, their “footsteps” clicking and clacking
across my borrowed bedroom’s oaken floor.
Bigger than my thumbs, almost big as Santa
Monica mice, demanding from me — only a tenant —
their fair price. Tough as lead nails, millennial
survivors, all that term they’d clacked for snacks —
leapt to my bed, scrunched together at my hip,
snorted crumbs from my blanket and smeared
my moody Chekhov. Muse, in my credulous youth
I swore to revere all life, no matter how repellent,
how crude the nervous system. But but — I made
small kissing noises for Mensch, my Russian Blue,
a creature who’d eat anything tasty, living or baked,
that he could feasibly torture and devour. His step
killingly soft, his furry hind parts twitched in feline
anticipation, his teeth made hideous gnashing noises.
Oh, those mammoth roaches, I told myself, they knew
nothing of my sorrows. Houston, that night, heartless,
I rolled on my side, turned a blind eye, a deaf ear,
and slept to the feral music of my blue cat’s crunching.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Inventions
We do not know one millionth of one percent of anything.
—Thomas Edison
What’s dis for? the child inquires, holding out a pair of red tweezers.
The next day, running barefoot through a sprinkler’s spray, a sharp
splinter in her foot supplies the answer, and I try not to look away —
blood! Who invented tweezers? — they’d have been centuries
in development, from one caveman’s calloused foot, spiked,
and bleeding and his fumbling stabs at extraction. No words
for take this out, for the inevitable infection — until what?
Until one day, a smart cave woman probably had an idea
and maybe made an extraction with a stone sharpened
on another stone, then in a cartoon balloon, shouted in cave
talk, Eureka? And one day, millennia later, someone honed
its tips and named the tool something mechanical yet lyrical
in lost vernacular of Mesopotamia. Long long ago,
centuries before our own clever tools — oh cellphones oh tweezers, —
a new word, symmetrical, lyrical, precise, Sumerian —
who’s to say it wasn’t lovely—some old Mesopotamian? —
before our surreal tools were ingeniously invented,
improved, and discarded — eons after the invention of naming …
Today, the child plays with her dad’s stegosaurus and his old
woolly mammoth — toxic plastic, cast in molds oh decades ago
in humungous factories somewhere in China running through
long sooty days and nights, toys she’s already outgrown. Today
didn’t I slide open a drawer — a drawer, whose brainchild
was that? — didn’t I grab a pair of scissors — Mesopotamia! —
didn’t I clip a clipping, from the Times, though I could
recover any data with the tap of a key or even a blink
of an eye or a stern command, and didn’t I wonder,
Who invented scissors? And didn’t I, of course, guess, Leonardo?
And then, No, surely they’d be Chinese — but (thank you, Google)
they’re Egyptian though Leonardo must have fine-tuned them.
Today I hug my New York Times, ink-printed on paper — Paper!
Printing! I’m thanking my wondrous old friend Gutenberg —
but today, because bad news keeps punching its way in here,
my mind craves a swerve, a wander. And here I’ve found it!
Report: the Hague claims they’ve found a solution
to the seas rising. A solution! A solution. Oh paper! Oh print.
Thank you my German friend Gutenberg, thanks to you
I’ll imagine this world without mass flooding, and praise
the Dutch genius who’s saving our planet from drowning …
/ / /
To read Tyler Mill’s 2022 On The Seawall dialogue with Gail Mazur, click here …