Report from Sichuan

The pallid hands extend on broken wrists.
A mother cries. A soldier holds his hand
up to the cameras and journalists

are pushed aside. White-knuckled fists
hold bandages and handkerchiefs and sand.
The pallid hands extend on broken wrists

from underground. A bitter rain persists
and feeds the muddy rivulets that panned
up to the cameras and journalists

on Monday afternoon. Official lists
are published and reported secondhand.
The pallid hands extend on broken wrists

behind a barricade as scientists
record the aftershocks and leave what’s scanned
up to the cameras and journalists.

There are no westerners. No communists.
A man in raingear hollers a command.
The pallid hands extend on broken wrists
up to the cameras and journalists.

May Gardening

Last year’s habanera stalks lay sapped
like the wooden bones of prehistoric birds,
full skeletons collapsed and broken, wrapped
in winter grass and ivy, spelling words
in a language that I’ve lost or keep forgetting
year-to-year as every year I stare
into the ruins of the fall, the netting
of a shipwreck, feathers, bone and hair.
The months ahead will shift through garden rakes
and Sunday afternoons spent with my daughter
tending peppers, yellow garter snakes
in dusty sunlight, chlorophyll and water.
This afternoon I start to clear the ground,
distracted in this brittle lost and found.

Revelation

By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence
will predominate.–Ray Kurzweil

Are science and religion converging? No.–Richard Dawkins

Un-ring the bell? Impossible. It’s come,
Dispersed itself in every bronchiole
And office tower. Now the isotope
Of unknown metal bangs in every hole,
The slam of withered hand against a drum
Advancing like some crimson-slippered pope.

A lock of numbers. Law of propagation.
Our biology becomes a field
Of leapfrog, silicon evolving from
Petroleum. The softer senses yield
To matrices of predetermination,
Measured by a hand across a drum.

A rapture of electron retinas,
Robotic dreams, and sacramental math
Reforms the logos to a barcarole
That chokes the solace of our doubt. The path
Ahead is cleared and charted by antennas.
Silos rise. A fire in every hole.

..for Measure

My villanelle “Under Glass” is in the current issue of Measure, which is now a biannual journal of formal verse. I’m flattered, because most villanelles suck and these guys know it.