On the Fourth Day, and: Home on It

On the Fourth Day

Suddenly everythingStayed the same.

We who had calledThe water blue

Refocused on our lenses.We who had seen the island move

Reunderstood our oars. The sandComposed some drumlins in the sound

So we revised the sky. And whether we felt fog or not,The sun still burned alive. Arose, along the tide lines,

Ever un-updated news. (Some news was notOf men.) A day and a night were number five

And suddenly nothing changed again.

Home on It

So much appearsUnfit for poetry. To rage about

The insular, to croon aboutthe moon. Romances

of the narrow mind, insteadof studies of serious bedrock

or adventures on asea. At school the rule is always

getting hackneyed, an inevitable skitlaugh-tracked with advertising jokes; the heart

cannot go out, consigned to ouraccessoried electives. Nor can mind.

Let’s set the lot of them adrift, kickkids across an ocean at sixteen,

to work at wonder, somewhere, wellbefore they’re fully glazed, committed

to positions moralist or borrowist or authorizedby fashion. Let’s let them fly, or float, or

fathom anything, and in the processfind themselves immersed. Not fretting

over first, or fast, or failed — just gettingopen-minded, with a chance to feel

past greed to curiosity and pastdefiance to discovery, surprise in place

of a recliner. Then change may seemnot lucre’s superfluity, but life’s own

streaming science; dream comeunbespoke; their folks look

admirably strange; and then a rangebe no appliance.