Lost my tweezers this morning,
and my attention to detail.
What's the point of plucking?
That fascist, entropy, spoils everything.
We want to do things once and done.
Tweeze a chin, pluck a brow,
Sweep a floor, sort the drawer.
Entropy's mother is doubt
laced up tight as a nymph, for a little while.
In the meantime, my chin glares back from the mirror
righteous with white hairs - vestigial colonists, Plymouth Rock;
like a little Aryan Nation on the rise.
My white terrier runs nose to ground,
trails the vapors of last night's forage,
raging against the scattering scents - more entropy, more spoils.
What is the point of chasing what's long gone anyway?
The king of confusion complains his election win was stolen.
Corona virus says, more like metabolized by facts.
Imagine the celebrations we could be having now.
But that revelry rocketed off with the SpaceX Dragon;
and we watched it board the ISS.
The party is overhead until spring, and
we skulk about like ghosts of Christmas past.
Where did I lay those tweezers anyway?
We always have a choice;
the days always darken in November.
I think I have conflated the two.
But I am deflecting and sulking about trifles.
Maybe the point is to be more consistent,
to have a routine, grow an indefatigable spirit.
My terrier's short legs pound the perimeter,
the cold morning air spattered with his yaps.
He's a familiar that tells no lies.
My thumb and index pull at chin hairs
as I chew the seeds of deeper vexation,
the troubles that came home to roost this year.
It's the weather and the ice caps and the Anthropocene.
What happens when the ocean currents dwindle?
When we devour the last crumbs of Eden?
Attenborough said, " We have broken loose."
But our bones, sinewed to matrimonies old as the hills,
know we are kin with Sitka and swallows and stars.
The mitochondria in every cell remember who we are.
I glare back at my impudent chin, contemplating secession
from modern folly. I want to make alms of my human capital
Trade friends family community country
for long solitary walks in the prairie;
pledge allegiance to what came before us.
And just where is the solitary in Earth time?
phytoplankton krill auklet seal human - all one biology.
More folly won't fix it.
My terrier has fixed on his own obsessesions,
dashing faster along the fence line,
his upturned muzzle yawps at anything with ears.
If this pen were not so focused on the next word and the next,
intent on this mental colonic,
I would bring him in, feed him a soothing breakfast.
Scratch his backside, behind his ears
My chin of marauder heritage,
nods as he makes another pass beyond the window.
Let him be. The air can hold all the bluster he can muster.
More noise for our lost signal, another cacophony on wing;
Keeping order has always been the salt mine.
We dream in easy, and we tease the struggle;
But the forest knows how to adjust her shackles and survive.
The river carries mountain in his belly and barges on his back.
Maybe my terrier's yawps are heralds
for the next story unfolding -- a beanstalk headed for the clouds.
I'm imagining the first few lines.
My tweezers appear on a window sill,
on the little blue planet that accommodates any catastrophe
we contrive and, from the ISS, still looks as fresh as a daisy in May.
Comments