Princess Sputnik
Anemones and galaxies--
an entirety of wishes: Watch the eucalyptus
drop its hoary, ancient fruits.
Oh, we know
we're not in Kansas anymore, as if anyone
could forget your easybake
exoskeleton,
your crown of plastic dinosaurs, or set aside
nine months, set aside
the brief history
of time and all the other space-age materials
and then see
if you can indifferently
consider the present rage for balance,
for the harmonious
existence of god
and rocketry, trilobites and honey.
We'll yet discover
the undiscovered
country, the hidden territory, the secret
of the old clock,
the moonstone castle
mystery, and we'll do it presently, as soon
as we've finished
our walk on the surface
of things, mapped the moon, Copernican
frame of this latest
dimension in our endless
collection of oddities, of empties, this nothing,
this space, this final frontier.
(6) Tests of Balance and Hydration
The drunken sailor appears
on the rooftop at night. Flanked
by the cedar water tower,
he looks an unavenging angel,
bedraggled,
his dark dumb eyes glass-fronted
beneath his crew-cut hair.
I stand beside him as he waves
his torso in response
to the pulse of the traffic below,
as it blurs with the too fast tears
of the sentimentally drunk.
His face runs with salt.
We're far from his home. He waves
and he cries, this unbalanced tide.
I stand very still, thinking,
he'll cry an ocean, you know.
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