the guilt,
and arrange our chips in a manner that will affect
the outcome of the football game. We accept
the superstition’s fetish and believe by eating
the organic apple, and stacking the plastic bottles,
we will hold back the erosion of the glaciers.
We tell ourselves we’re doing our part and keep
our fair practice good coffee karma intact.
The Starbucks logo features a double-tailed
mermaid that is swimming in neither direction.
The enlightened consumer is in pursuit of happiness,
hedonism disguised as spiritual freedom, paradise
purchased one cup of coffee at a time, like a bird
repeatedly attacking its reflection on the window.
Not the thing itself, but the representation.
Coca-Cola was a tonic, but Coke is iconic,
a brand inseparable from our cultural experience,
like a print taken from a finger, lingering less.
Let’s forget, for a second, the syrupy effervescence,
or the grand imitations, Pepsi, Pepper, Pibb.
Just as we do not practice the pronouncement
of our neighbor’s names; we know them by their Prius.
Our language is alive and cannot designate reality,
but becomes a beacon, or signal, of our relation,
ghost isotopes that build a memory from the alphabet
and provide a trail for the sale, like the mystery
of Coke, the more you drink, the more you want.
Some stars catching our worried gaze have
already ceased to exist, so far away only their light
is left, disappearing in the cold static space.
Those quiet mornings alone, or in fading twilight,
when the mind wanders backward on its tracks,
cirrus clouds thinning on the scarred horizon,
dolphins plowing together in the near surf,
or insects chirring atop the gently trembling trees,
each given significance as markers for a life.
A bone-encased pocketknife, peacock earrings,
an uncle’s dragon scarf folded out of Saigon’s
final chaos, slowly lose their luster, or complicated
memory, as the generations stand at attention
in the roll call of deplorable time.
The clusters of music, whose muscles cannot
outlast the marathon of styles, are layered
era upon era, sparkling melodies recycled
by attentive geologists digging through
the stacked boxes in the attic or the basement.
Let the wan night, even when wintered,
fight the gauze of nostalgia and give refuge
to every fire, the future freshened,
and hard run sharpened against
the only path found, signpost labeled
what is to come, what is to come, what is to come.
If it takes the lives of twelve bees to make
a teaspoon of honey, why is it so absurd to believe
that our bodies are composed entirely of light?
GREAT BLUE HERON
for Amanda
Unable to extricate
itself from the silver
flash of trout
the spirit of the river
the great blue heron
its head shaped
like a rock hammer
stalks the brooking edge
on spindly stilts
and braids his hunger
into the oncoming
and infinite curl
of brisk mountain water
before the twin flames
of wings spread
without warning
and lifts the whole
giant jumble of sticks
and feathers silently
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