Originally posted 2/21/2012; originally titled “Political Poem For Monster Movie Fans.”

That’s one bad reptile
standing between us
and the way out.

We’re going to have to walk
under his belly
to escape.
We’re going to have do it
consumed by fear
of him dropping lazily down
to crush us
or deciding to wheel down and about
and lap us into his mouth.

It’s going to smell.
It’s going to be dark.
We’re going to have to walk,
not run, for fear of him feeling us
galloping through.  

He’s so big, so swollen,
might even be venomous though 
he doesn’t need poison to take us;
our biggest threat may be
that he won’t even know we’re there
and our demise will be accidental,
a side effect of him
shifting his bulk. We’ll be 

a clutch of pointless, unremarked deaths.
When the case is laid out like this
the possibility
of us getting through
shrinks to not a prayer in this hell —

but then,
this is Hell,
already.  And 

Hell has never
stopped us from acting
on our desperate prayers — hell,
when has Hell
ever stopped anyone
who has nothing to lose?

Originally posted 7/6/2013.

I salute the Earth
this morning,
every morning,

longing to do it
as it should be done —
in community, with others,
with tamboura,
horns, drums, finger cymbals,
and flutes;

knowing it should be done
with dancing, with
heels never touching,
a toe-tip reel grounded
but striving upward;
it deserves no less.

But I am alone,
have no instruments,
and cannot move
as I once did, so
I can only do it
with nerve and
a celebratory shiver
in my stiffening limbs.
I can only do it
with hard-found words
sung poorly
in the one language
I manage to speak.

Not to salute the earth
feels to me as though
I am breaking
a commandment
that was somehow left out:

“Salute this earth
with whatever you have.
Keep it holy through all the days
as if each day were a Sabbath.”

Thus, I salute the earth
in the morning
every morning
and am still waiting to see
what if anything
our customary God
will do about it —
so far, nothing,
but this sunrise suggests
there is no displeasure
on high.