My son and I spent weeks assembling
a Lego car, 3,000 bricks of hard plastic
intricately connected to form a whole.
The adults hurry to their cars as the bell rings,
the crossing guard sips his water, takes off his vest:
Today the children will read of warriors and kings…
When you have run out of courage;
when every day is a loaded gun
and your hand is not on the trigger;
when you have given all you have
to give and still disaster looms;
Like the pile of books on my nightstand,
like the ever-falling leaves
in the yard,
my worries accumulate.
Lazy job-stealers,
pet-eaters, storm-profiteers:
Immigrants are Gods.
Lately it seems I am doing everything by half.
Half-hearing the morning warble of Robins,
the gunshot-terror of the morning news.
The moon, cold and pockmarked and hard,
is not dainty.
The moon belches starlight,
has no gender.
You may think it inconsequential that an empty
tube of toothpaste is not, if pressed, empty,
but has more to give of itself. You may prefer
odes to lofty ideas, or nature, or love…
In my pocket I have access to all the world’s knowledge:
calculators, AI, essays, videos to solve any equation.
Still, when the vet says 50% chance of permanent paralysis
and, though the literature is sparse, a high probability of
Myelomalacia—fatal, painful—I am as the hiker who…
You don’t need to watch the news. Walk the
dog. Lay in the grass. Watch a cloud settle
into evening’s funereal pews. That terror which
lies in wait will be there when you return…