1.
I can’t take the silence any longer, this weight
greater than the one that reigns over the lands
around Isle Royale, Minnesota. Enthroned
atop the starry heights of Mt. Josephine,
it takes tribute from the pines standing sentinel
north of Grand Portage, all the way to Thunder Bay.
Each needle spared by the lumber company tapers
to a kind of sigh, like the Romanoffs
turning away from the Winter Palace.
Unlike the slow unwinding of the maples,
these green rockets aim straight for the heavens:
not really needles, they wait to tell us
something about the location of Solomon’s treasure.
And, when the wind flushes through such verdant gills,
we hear past loves warning us
of the rickety bridge just ahead.
2.
Yesterday I was making my tea
as the new president read from his prompter
how they would re-name it the Gulf of America.
My cup turned into a bird and flew out the window.
The gilt frame of Monet’s Houses of Parliment
strung-up in Chicago’s art institute
turned to soot and shot through the duct-work,
spiraling down like food-stamp angels over
the rats skulking in the rail yards,
the whitetail trapped in the cloverleaf,
and the newlyweds strolling Lakeshore Drive,
where the specter of the boot-black still shivers
after midnight, lolling at the store windows.
Yes, I heard the children crammed inside
the cornerstones of the nation’s city halls gnash
their calcified teeth, asking why
Genghis Khan’s victims get all the press;
screaming why no one dares say that the GDP
rises and falls depending on how many times
the husband smacks his wife after the game.
I pulled on my stocking cap, and sloughed off to work.
I mean, what else was I supposed to do?
3.
Yes, maybe it were better to just keep quiet,
the way we were taught, choking on
our government cheese,
and silent k’s, suckling
from the engorged teats of the refineries?
I should, should I not, exhibit, at the very least,
the courtesy of adverting my gaze
the next time I am hearing
the silk hem of the moon’s gown
trail over that loon-crested lake?
And, thus, from here on out,
not even my old teachers –
all whom I’ve failed – can save me,
and anywhere I turn, the softest arrows speed
at me through the untethered dawn, barbed
with the smirk of the baron who quips
the peasants are revolting.
.
Thor Bacon
.