Watching a show
on terraforming Mars
and wondering

what Crazy Horse would think.

An astrobiologist says,
“To me, it’s about Mars being like
the vacant lot next door.  It’s about bringing life
to where there is no life,
and that’s inherently good.  If the lot
is vacant,
why not plant a garden?”

I’m going to drop
the resurrection plant
I bought in the Phoenix airport
into a glass of water
and think about this
while it unfolds.

Crazy Horse,
if you’re listening,
please accept my apologies
for bringing it here, and
for the moment when I become bored
and take the plant out of the bowl
to watch it dry up again
until the next whim.

I see how it goes with us,
how we scheme for order
while the earth makes us scramble
for it. 

All that blank red dust…
a beacon for something inside…

all the things we’ve learned
about the way we are,
yet we still think we know best.

They’re working on race cars
in Charlotte, baseball bats in Louisville,
beer in breweries coast to coast
and logo T-shirts in Singapore.
It’s snowing in Massachusetts,
icefishers set their tilts on far lakes.
Couples are planning to screw
tonight.  It’s the day of New Year’s Eve
and the strange and typical rituals of hope
abound among people. 

Dead cold in the north,
high summer down south, the tropics bake
and rain as always, the planet
holds its events without thinking
as it always does…no calendar required
to bring life through death and back again.

We seem to think we matter to the planet
and that we wrote the music
time plays for its parade…someday a hibernating bear
is going to wake up, we’ll be gone,
and it won’t notice anything different except
an increased freedom to be itself.
No engines will roar, no baseballs will soar,
and the only drunkenness will come
when wasps suck the fermented sap from fallen pears.

We’ll be regretted, if at all,
only as much
as any other extinction.

Desperately seeking
sexiness, she
had done cumulative damage
to her animal heart
by lunging after acceptance
from unworthy men.
Donned imaginary
lures and fished.  There was
something baitlike
about her, a hook hidden
within that was not
well-disguised, was easily avoided,
and those who bit
took at least
a little piece of her, some
a big piece of her, with them,
and what was left wriggled
with volition that
did not seem
to be her own.

a man
became a critter

creeping
over land

he sat on rocks
turned em over for moral guidance

he’s a cemetery
of thinking —

left over
animal

reptile brained
chunk of reaction

fight and bite
sleep where it’s warm at night

stay out of the cold
of opinion

screw a little
when needed

no need for a lot of breath
to tell this story

it’s so common
you might be forgiven

for pretending it’s not true
just another legend

until you cross paths with him
while trying to fall in love

Swear
that you can lose yourself
easily
in something
if you want to be
close to me,

for the best friends I have
thrive
on a passion
outside themselves,

live as if they are constantly
writing letters to others
that begin with “To Whom
It May Concern,”

and go on for pages
of detail, obsession
writ tight and careful,
no detail left behind,

certain that whoever receives
the letter will be
concerned as they are concerned,

ending them always with,
“Love” or “I eagerly await
your response,” forgetting
(or perhaps omitting with intent)

their names, the least important
detail, not worthy of note
in the presence of the greater topic.

These are the people I love most:
the ones who can forget themselves in something
as I have forgotten myself.

We find each other
without worrying about who we are
because from the start,
from first contact,
we understood that we had it right:
we are incidental chips bobbing
in the wake of our love
for the torrents of this world.

red lights skewing
across the road
in the white darkness
and the visible wind.

we sleep through
someone’s near disaster,
ignorant for now of fear
of losing control

even as we are blown
in our dreams to vulture islands
as the cold beak of winter
tears at our rest. 

we will face the morning
with crossed fingers
hoping the road under the snow
will hold us when it’s our turn.