Normally the score gets settled. The earth,
after all is said and done, gets it right.
An arrow straight to the bull’s fired-up heart.
In fact, as we speak, things are about as
settled as ever. And on we move to the bigger
and better, just like they say. There’s just no
reason to think any other way is
out there. And another avowal spat
out like a ham sandwich is “It all happens
just as it’s supposed to.” Like those obstinate
kinships stapling you to every tree, placard,
license plate, dumb pedestrian, vacant lot
on lot growing to seed, bleeding in
a stream past the panes of your hastening
bus in cords of pleated, pliable light.
No stark inclination, no beveled inkling
was, is, or will be as pure as this one.
There was the week three friends lay in a coma.
Just happenstance. One induced. Two brought on
by brute blunt force. One more second ticks by
and there is no other way to say it,
except to say “This is all that is there.”
No matter when she wakes up. There are shocks,
dunkings in ice baths, and hypodermics
brimming with adrenaline pearls. Wager
upon wager until the frayed caput.
Two of them, in fact, splashed to the happy
surface. And the third, according to the
principles by which our late mournings
articulate themselves, arrived blinking
and upright on a shore, if anything,
kindlier and more vast than this our own.