In my pocket, 
my imaginary country,

a best version
of this one; I carry it

with me tightly 
wrapped in hope.

It’s currently populated by
dinosaurs who emerge

as gentle as 
a hurricane’s far-side

sunlight filtering into
destroyed 

familiarity. If you see
them lumbering

into your path you
will be instantly changed

and unsure: what
is this?

What sorcery is this
that cures

both extinction and
gigantism? If you 

mean that you want
to know and are not just 

disbelieving your own eyes,
I will

point simply at the hope
and say it’s been there

all along, the magic
which when worked

can change all,
raising the long-thought dead

from a pocket
where it’s been kept

safe against 
battering and bring it back

to a sustainable form
and thus save a ravaged landscape.

In the moment
of crisis called 
today —

not to say
that all moments
of every day do not contain 
crisis for someone —

not to say
that it has not always been so
and that it will not
always be so —

not to say 
that this crisis here is not
the result of someone preventing
their own crisis there — 

not to say
that some crisis has not been made
by someone to make their own life
comfortable —

not to say 
that in fact all these earthly crises
do not have a thread of preventability
and volition tacked on somewhere —

in this moment of crisis called today I
am looking up and seeing it all as a Calder,
a mobile swinging —

huge and weighty disguised as flight
and light but all suspended by a cord
thinner than one would imagine —

not to say
it is incapable
of holding it
any longer — 

not to say
it will surely fail shortly
and crash, 
killing or tearing up all — 

not to say
anything other than 
if it were given
a good shake,

today might as well
be renamed
The End.

If a cup of some
store-bought tea leaf-dust
is enough to calm you, you should

make a cup. If a moment
before the window, staring into
dirty city snow at drab birds,

is enough to make you feel
a stab of peace, by all means
be seated with your cup 

before the window. It’s OK
to turn off the news for a moment
and pretend that there’s nothing

to worry about, nothing to be done.
It’s all going to be terrible for a while yet
and there’s a lot for each of us to do —

but here you are and here’s the tea 
and those sparrows and no sun out there
so the gray snow for once matches the sky

and there’s no immediate war to fight —
sit, have a moment, no matter how engaged
your life has been you have a right

to stop now and then, to see now and then a reason
to turn back to the news and the struggle
and the work.  See how they are, those birds —

they often stand completely still
for a few seconds at a time
and still manage to fly when they need to fly.

The storm is later than was forecast.
The wind hasn’t yet begun to shift
the dunes on the Cape, there’s no snow yet
in the Worcester hills. People
will soon be complaining
about the weather report,
even though it has favored them
so far with its inaccuracy — damn,

don’t you love people? Don’t you find
them as ridiculous and adorable
as infant Tasmanian devils, baby
demons as cute as any little
flesh shredders could possibly be?

The Super Bowl was on last night.
Half the audience hates half the audience,
half hate the halftime show, half hate the
commercials, half hate
that it even happened at all — damn, 

don’t you just love people? Can’t you
see them in all their inscrutable glory
asking for absolution for every petty 
act of genocide they’ve ever assisted
through the practice of minor binaries
and trivial hatreds? 

In the meantime the bees are swarming
less and less and there are fewer to swarm
at all.  In the meantime the winds
are starting to change, ruffling fewer furs,
whistling over drier lakes, taking more
bomb dust with them. In the meantime
we’re waiting for the loitering storm – damn,

why don’t you love, people? It’s not as it
there much time left. What could it hurt
to try and love? Except for the proud legacy
of standing alone in a carefully selected crowd
of your well-conforming peers, there’s not much point
in hanging on to it. Why don’t you just adore us,
people, we the maddening mad people? How different
we are from each other, how very much the same?