As If a Windsock
As if a windsock could tell
which way the spirit is blowing
or a cascade know the exact configuration of
all its falling drops
Just as no statistician can exactly
track where each of us is going
and where our jumpy thoughts will
take us to the interior or to the edge
where smoke rises like corkscrewing
cypresses into a blue bloated sky
and nothing is exactly as it seems
But who has God’s true optical gauge?
The leap of wild beasts across a
narrow divide
or an electric shot of lightning that
seems to jag horizontally low to the ground
or a sudden silence in a room full of
people might go some distance
to explaining what it is that so
dazzles and intrigues us onward
in spite of the herds of stubborn mules
crossing our path
or our narrow escapes from flash
floods and fire into relatively
normal deliriums where at least the
bobbing faces at our sides and afloat all
around us are angelic in shape
and earnest in their general demeanor
Too much chatter Pipe down! and
too much silence I can’t hear you!
To much death crowded with
to much life Back off a little please!
Go easy on all those seemingly
indiscriminate inclusions
and let some sparrows go from
falling and catch some of the
falling sparrows in the sweet
benevolence of your hands
A supreme certainty slides up the
straws from all our liquid refreshments
while a supreme indifference looks on the
least of us with tears in its eyes
and none of us goes home alone at
last without at least a
companionable zebra or two or
the shadow of guidance visibly
up ahead who waits for us through every
calamity
and around the bend from every
unforeseen disaster
1/3/2009 (from Sparks Off the Main Strike)
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