If/When, and: Please Let It Be Aliens

If/When

The poem I planned to writewas about last week's hurricane,

about how I live in Mississippi,not that far from the storm's rages,

and how even still we feltnothing here, nothing at all.

That was going to be the ending,because I wanted to make a point

about how easy it is to ignoredisaster when it's not churning

directly over your town, and I was hopinga reader might then extrapolate

a larger point about disturbanceand proximity, like how politicians

are always saying they used to oppose Xuntil some terrible Y happened

to their daughters, and it seemsto me we're requiring an awful lot

from daughters these days. Sons, too.This week a message from my kids'

school district included the phrase if/whena lockdown is ever necessary. The reason

I'm writing this poem insteadof the one I'd planned is that I keep

thinking about that e-mail and alsonow the hurricane was a week ago

and there's a new disturbanceforming near the Bahamas. And

last night Sioux Falls was tornadoshreddedand in Sterling, Colorado,

egg-size hail pummeled windshields,and I guess what I'm saying is, Why bother

with a poem about one hurricane,one e-mail? There will be more,

and there will be more,and there will be more until

there is nothing left. The thingabout the poem I was going to write

is that it would have been a lie.That nonsense about how we don't

feel it here. We feel it everywhere,don't we? Dear daughter, dear son,

dear someone's something, we're wellpast the if and into the when.

Talk about proximity—some days I wear the world

like a skin. I am tired of waitingfor extrapolation. Let us all

be disturbances now.

Please Let It Be Aliens

A solar observatory in New Mexico is evacuated for a week andthe FBI is investigating. No one will say why.—washington post

Let it be a silver disk, a foil zeppelinblipping across the radar, a blotin front of the sunand then gone.Let the word intergalacticbe paired at last with espionage.Let uniformed men stride brisklydown long corridors; let astronomerspace and calculate.Let there be phone calls and code words,an envelope unsealedby trembling hands,and let the light become strange,the radio signals scramble,the dogs whine skyward.Let there be a great silver crackdown the sky of our surety,and flames, and fearborne of wonder. Oh, let itbe aliens for once, instead of anotherthreat from our own sad sack planet,a call-from-inside-the-house twistwe all see coming.Let us believe,though it seems impossible,that someone still wants to claim us,someone still thinks our poisongreenworld worth wanting.