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[from September, 1999, workshop. Poets wrote down random images and phrases
and then passed them around in a basket. This poem written in response
to words taken from basket.]
"Dead Rat on Window Sill"
Shiki would have written haiku:
Cold rain in gutter
rat caught in eddies
dregs of our lost century
Marge Piercy would have written of
rats, rubber tires, radioactive rods
sewage fed back to our faucets by oceanic vengence
Walt Whitman would have written:
This too is a miracle: the thundering miniature heart,
small mammal paws in grasslands, graneries, in floorboards,
life scavenged underfoot. . . .
And I?
I can write nothing, only wonder
at the dead rat on the window sill.
And, should I let the cat lick my hand?
* * * *
For poem written at August workshop, see Night Plums.
* * * *
[from January 20, 1999:]
The most fearsome phenomenon
called a black hole.
So massive "no light can escape it," they say.
Rather, "all light is drawn to it," I say.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Look to the heavens.
not to clouds or faint stars.
Not sentiment.
Cosmic
Black hole in a galaxy
black because so forceful
none can resist its gravity.
Dr. King.
Feel the gravity of his soul
drawing us into
his immense dream.
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