Wrecked Lands

Wilds of the Fourth Kind,
Bugs so rare they don’t
Have names, counts past count
Per square foot, blast walls
Now in cloaks of moss,

Old paint flakes, leaf drifts,
Ponds of rust, poured floors,
Well-cracked, kept woods back.
Let the trees come last.
Let it get as good

As it gets, then woods,
Since, once woods, that’s good
As it gets. For now,
Small lives on small lives
Lace up the trashed wreck,

Make lots of small holes.
Leave scars and cramped caves.
The germs and the bugs
Will love this, and then
What eats them and then

What eats them, and then
At last, you’ll love them,
These bing heaps you’ve strewn.
Waste will mean what waste
Once meant. Where life went.

You Give Words Too Much Work to Do

Loss, what was but is not
Dread, what is but might not be
Dread, what is but will be lost
Dread, what is not but might be
Hope, what is not but might be
Hope, what is not but not yet lost
Hope, what is but could be lost
Loss . . . the list goes on

More’s Why Bombed-Out Towns Get Bombed More

There’s a link from the worst
To the best that you live,
That you act, and it’s more.

You wake up to clear skies,
And when the sun floods grass
So the dun stems flash gold

In some small patch you watch
As if your thoughts owned it,
You think, this is good. More

Of this, you hope to get
More. And at the far end
Of that wish and the fear

You might not see the sun
Lay such sweet gold in grass
Next time, or the next, might

And will lose all this soon,
Bloom the harsh acts you take
To keep your patch from them,

The ones like you who want
More. Let them have less! More
Is what you’ve earned. Take it

Back from them. Push them off
Your sweet gold patch of grass,
And if, like you, they won’t

Go, bomb them. Bomb them more
If you have to, as much
As you can. Make them run,

Off your patch, off their patch,
And bomb to ash what’s left.
Sun turns their ash gold. More.

True, in the midst, there’s much
Not as sweet, not so cruel.
Most of what is most you

Just lives and does, not much,
In that midst, what you do.
But when that flash glows? More.

Change Makes What Stays the Same

The graves are green;
They may be seen.
The urns are small
And clay. The names

Scraped close to ash
Or bones shape words
And counts of dates.
The breath that left

Is still the air;
The wet of flesh
Is rain. It’s all
Still here, all there,

But all of it
Has changed. Loss makes
What’s left. What’s same
Is not the same.

Who Counts

To name is one thing.
To count steals the name,
With a new name, one

Both more sole, more shared,
Placed on top of it,
Like a lid: here is one.

To count cuts things off
From the world of things
To be grouped as one.

What names do, counts do
More. They slice the shade
So fine it’s not one.