It’s a lovely March New England day,
40 with a high of 48.
My joints have grown stiff with winter,
But surely spring has time to spare!
Perhaps in April I’ll ride my bike.
A rock skips across the sky,
leaves concentric circles of cloud
to wonder at.
It does not matter who lit the flame
That burned the Reichstag down,
Only that it burned and so few
Considered what cremation means
To those who long for proper burial.
In Ronda the cliffs are steep
And the waters mild so far as I recall;
Her sun sets on a landscape of olives and dust,
She swallows time in great gulps of oil and sky—
You notice your parents’ aging as you do your own:
Not at all, then in a photo, all at once.
Nothing but a flock of pre-dawn breeze,
And florid sky, and lake
Taut with water, like a sail:
A painting in motion, unfinished.
I had thought I lacked for time
and spent my days frantic,
as though life were a web
and death a looming spider, his
approach inexorable, his mouth
large enough to swallow whole
my ambitions.
A relentless South Texas wind poses impossible questions,
Flaps the smirking flags until they are upturned,
Mists the mown grass with evil’s sputum,
Ripples the lone unarmed security guard’s shirt
As he waves concentration camp employees
I am become the poet of resistance.
I write like a comet, a solar flare,
A sawed-off shotgun,
And where my words no longer suffice
Let them mingle with my blood,
All is quiet, save a receding engine’s roar,
a plume of smoke, and my uneven, unsteady breath.
I want to live after all, or at least survive
the day’s threshing