Never Turn Your Back on the Ocean

A life raft on your lawn.
Get in and push off.
Desert your island.

What now, now that the world
is behind you? Mind
the breakers.

Fashion a fishhook, chum the water, raise a flag.

If you were a baby just delivered
someone would have a towel ready
and you would wonder

what now? This is the world? Is it just all rafts
and breakers? Hooks and chum? Is this the end?
Is that why the whole world is here?

Duck Song

In my duck blind
I’m the last of my kind.
On my duck call
I play the last song.

Here swims
the seventh swan.
The next world
will be feathered.

Fledgling

My carpet has no egg tooth
so I chisel the ceiling away for it.
After its first molt
its markings emerge —
braided animals, squarish flowers.
As it dreams, its fringe flutters.

We lurch and plummet before
we learn to soar
among the saddled pterosaurs.
Low on carpet fuel
we land, vacuum and preen
set watch for carpet beaters.
If there are no floors
we camp, unroll in the morning
gossip about tapestries
and watch the wild rugs flit.

Brechtian

He’s looking at his wanted poster
like a mirror
inflects his bowler to match.
The adjustment is an enterprise
that dominates his silence, his exit
and it rides him down the alley.

He plays the pasha in the brothel.
At ease, can’t see
he’ll be betrayed by the woman
who has put on his hat
who’s singing now —
it’s supposed to be a love song
and he strains to hear it that way.

The bowler beetles,
muffles the liebesliede
and his gaze has strayed.
She sings into the bandit’s cave
his hat has become.

She is tiny, just her and the hat —
she holds it now to catch her tears —
she’s learned there’s yet time
to starve before the murders start.

He snatches it back,
one hand glides on the brim
the other strokes a blade
of his mustache.
She takes his measure
from crown to spats
and her decision has been made.