Against Atrocity

COUNTING BACKWARD TO THE LAND

The high desert is a dog with no sense of time.*

* From Nuevo Mexico by Renny Golden in Blood Desert, Witnesses 1820-1880 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010).

COUNTING BACKWARD

Counting backward, common practice

at my age, I may stumble upon

the ancient turquoise bead I stooped to gather

from Chaco’s purple sand.

I knew I was acting against legality

and moral rightness

when I refused to return that bead

to its millennial seasons.

Continuing to count, I might remember

a conversation pierced by shadow,

that woman who passed us on the trail,

helped when I fell against a rock,

then disappeared when we tried

to thank her: ghosts when least expected,

melodies singing in my head for years,

giving me comfort when alone.

I return to the high temperature

of steadying hands on mine

when the sound of soldier’s boots

thunders through my head.

Any soldiers. Any boots. Any war.

I clutch to my breast

the birth of each child,

holding fast its place in body memory.

Counting, I always find your kiss

of prolonged intensity,

lips that thirty years on haven’t ceased

to caress mine with their gentle fire.

No need to go backward

to embrace that kiss.

It is with me as I write,

bathes me in permanence.

ESTIMATED COST

A pleated ridge of clouds blankets my mountains this morning:

between embrace and ominous, revealing deception

normal in these times.

A hopeful young scientist proposes installing a giant fan

where it can blow frigid air off the North Pole

causing the ice cap to thicken again,

preventing a rise of oceans swallowing small nations

and the need of those whose fans are woven

of crude palm and ordinary dream.

Five hundred billion is the estimated cost for something

that may or may not work, and we all know

what estimated means.

We could decide to lower earth’s temperature

by reducing our consumption of fossil fuel

but that would cut into profits

and how then would we pay for the fan? The trouble

with poets, they say, is we fail to understand

how complex everything is,

busy as we are contemplating a surprise cloud bank

and putting two and two together

in clear morning light.

CRISSCROSSING THIS GENEROUS NEST

The American bison yesterday, like caribou

or wildebeest today, Canada geese,

Monarch butterflies, and salmon

fighting their way upstream:

all follow seasonal instinct, their need

to leave and return etched in the cycle

each journey describes.

Whales swim vast miles to feed, mate

and give birth, their yearly travels

taking them along unraveling coasts

welcoming new generations

as they circumnavigate naval sonar

and other impediments

with determination that astounds.

Magnetic perception, lunar orientation,

landmarks, echolocation, scent

or solar heat:

patterns of movement handed down

from generation to generation

attract and repel whole communities

crisscrossing this generous nest.

We humans too follow patterns laid down

by need. Outcast Europeans

defying oceans to begin again in a new place,

southern Blacks moving north in search

of work and dignity.

Exploration or displacement

depending upon who tells the story.

But male need too often follows a scent

of blood: disappearance, exile, war.

The Middle Passage remembers

foul vessels stuffed with human cargo.

Today’s migrations leave a trail

of deflated life vests, abandoned toys,

stories severed before The End.

Man, and it’s almost always man,