Sun Bear. Matthew Zapruder

smoke from a burning structure.

      She was dragging three or four ropes

      the color of umbilical blood.

      She was guarded by her wolf familiar.

      At first she terrified me.

      Then I saw she was causing

      certain spells to protect

      far away new mothers

      whose children must in the middle

      of great violence be born.

      The men surround the embassy.

      It will never be clear who sent them.

      For a moment I feel ashamed.

      I breathe the clear terrible air.

Public Art

      I hate bees E. said

      holding a spoon

      and I thought how zen

      to admit it

      for without

      those mechanical golden

      creepers moving

      among the crops

      with powder

      on their wings

      unbeknownst

      we would

      be super fucked

      they are

      said G. refusing

      a small ceramic

      cup of wine

      necessary

      and therefore good

      even that one

      stuck in the lamp

      will just go to sleep

      when you do

      we could see

      part of her face

      frown slightly

      then smile remembering

      how good it will be

      to be awakened

      at that hour

      only trucks

      move in the streets

      M. watched it

      crawl furiously along

      the intricate white

      tubing of one

      of those new bulbs

      we all are addicted

      to light he said

      and it is just one

      of ten thousand

      husbands

      then S. said

      do you think its feet

      hurt and I was

      suddenly aware

      of my toe

      she is my only

      husband and I

      her only flower

      of many changing

      colors that every

      morning grows

      up through the black

      soil of what is not

      into the early

      light that reflects

      at least a little

      color off

      whichever dress

      I help her choose

How Do You Like the Underworld

      The completely to me magical screen

      sits in the middle of this black desk

      I put together with such trouble,

      following the instructions, muttering

      its nonsensical Swedish name like a spell.

      The screen is a dark window.

      It can be made slowly light

      by pushing a single button. It nobly rises,

      a monument to a process begun

      some years ago in a completely

      dust free facility thousands of miles

      from Oakland where the free sun

      beats gently down on the heads

      of my neighbors. I hear them

      now for two sunlit moments pause

      to converse as their dogs touch noses.

      Meanwhile in the factory the workers

      wear white dustproof suits.

      The boss watches from a catwalk above.

      To be troubled only abstractly

      by the thought the thought in me

      of those totally pure white clad

      very real workers makes me

      a kind of boss

      though I wish I were not

      is the ultimate white person problem.

      To solve it I would like to ask

      an ancient philosopher, preferably one in a cave.

      But they are extinct. The humans

      who are not robots at all

      are right now robotically putting together

      insanely precise atomic components

      that make what we do go.

      Thus I can watch and interact

      with people I call followers or friends.

      Or rather the words they have put together.

      Down the screen they scroll.

      It makes me so dizzy.

      For a while I watched and thought

      how interesting. Then sad

      thinking animals. Without a thought

      to make them close

      I closed my eyes and saw

      a monk reading a book in the garden.

      The book was about music others

      left for us long ago and departed.

      What can you learn

      from a book about music?

      Some say to settle for winter.

      But they have read way too much Rilke,

      he is very dead, and his problems

      though cosmic did not include

      the round earth becoming hotter.

      I heard somewhere in Africa

      they have found a glittering valley

      an asteroid crashed into millions of years ago

      and filled with useful silicate.

      The frustules i.e. shells of single cell

      diatoms, make a white earth

      you can pack into tiny packets

      to keep things dry on