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The American landscape painting of our time
should be sketched in a smear from a moving car.
The American landscape of our time is a parking lot
and we all agree we don't like it here
today, we'd rather be in the city, but not
the last city, or any city at war, and particularly not
any place where disaster has cut off the lights.
And I wish I could take off my shoes, here in the
office, in my vastly over-rated position,
exposing my walked-on soles; this is
the only world after all, I know of none better
and if it's what we make it, then any moment is creation.
One cell at a time, one cell at a time,
we are cousins with the trees, evolving
with green, before green, one line at a time
poems are dissolving in melting terraces, fallen
free of history, the news shoots out the lights
and testimony streams from holiday weekend backup
on the bridge and over the nest of the peregrine falcon
baffled into high-rise lodgings. Somebody locked the trees out
and they fumble the window, as if they remembered us.
The world is printed on our bones--today, today,
the blue light on the hills, ancestor of the birds,
the red-tail's wing, down the river vein--
one sky at a time, now is the time before
green, the dark eon, fractal, April's dementia,
stirring, exposing scars, the downed
power line sputtering code--who am I? who am I? --
thrashing, on fire with a holy fit, not consumed, no peace, no peace,
and the seed in self-agony swells, split out of itself
once, once again and again, and the voice of the dead
uproaring: Pick up if you're there.