The book in our hands is a great gift,
the songs of our undoing.
No rules exist that constitute
what we know beyond our reach.
Who can wish an animal from the dark,
nets removed from these trees,
so many forms an ending can take.
*
The voice of the people
from river to river,
from the bent blade of the creek
to the shade trees lining the blocks
of Union Place, neither wild
nor tamed as no one took notice
of those minutes now lost in time,
newspapers that no longer exist.
20,000 bodies buried here,
a potter’s field and congregations
laid to rest under the construction
of fine houses, the edge of town
pushed further north.
The city sings its anthem
to a meandering line of horizon,
the great place of North America
in a river of oysters fresh from
the shallows of the harbor.
If we could articulate
the identity of this tributary,
will the world then outlast us?
How far the distances
we keep in the viral
pathways before us?
Who will update the maps
when the waters fill
the low lying lands?
*
In concrete, in gold
taller than the north
about pasts we never knew,
within the dream of this destruction,
imagining the city’s end
the locus
of depictions of conquest
and order
that did not blow
over
a thorough index
of the terminus.
As a fluid text
with our glory and with
our downfall
with the loss
and the creation there
of something new
the city will be a great place
if they ever finish it
some part
is always being undone.
*
That rare thing a history,
that everything we know
is wrong.
To meet the demands
of our growing,
the secrets of the earth
thawing to the surface
to burn.
There is no event
so sparse
this part is not so pleasant
from one day or hour
this place changes so much,
this page
intentionally left blank.
*
Named for the place
where they began,
the hill fires will all
have burned to the ocean,
the soil of those places
also washed down
to the sea.
If a tree falls,
then, yes, it sounded
and was heard in dialects
closed to us.
You would have thought
that one square inch
would have been enough.
You can’t get away from it. The taxis and the jackhammers. At all hours.
What about the farm? That should be quiet at least.
But the ranch hands will be up at dawn milking the cows and mending the fence.
What about Antarctica?
Yeah, but it will be the penguins peck, peck, pecking for food.
You’re right. The glaciers receding.
It’s the same thing every morning: grind, grind, grind. Those fucking ice caps melting: trickle, trickle, trickle.
Everything makes a sound
in the moment of its destruction.
The hills we see are always
between this flame
and the next.
Hell on earth, no,
just earth,
not earth.