I See Too Little Too Much

I see a shade on the window of the world,
and it is drawn

I see a plow in the fertile skin of the earth
and it is still

I see a Bible on the pulpit of peace and it is not
earmarked anywhere, for anything

I see a novel in the corner, unpublished, unread
an undreamt dream

which should be its title

I see a nurse on the floor in the hall
and everyone is buzzing

I see a dumpster full of truths, and a
crow picking one over

I see a group of monkeys hammering away at
pieces of granite and marble, and I see that they have written
on headstones everything ever written in The New York Times
another cosmological argument for the tyranny of nothing

I see a child walking down the sidewalk and
there are no crossing guards or warning lights, no signs
saying Don’t Walk or Go Back or Don’t Believe a
Word They Tell You

And I hear the trees screaming in the woodstove
and the cow moaning behind my freezer door

I see eviction notices posted over the doors
of bluebird houses, and lawnmower
tracks through the lilies of the field where there
is toil and vortex spin

And I see a yacht sinking on a golf green
or the fate of nations falling into a cup
with one wicked putt

I hear a poet in a café who has given up
words, and words that have given up meaning
and histories that are just Kuhnian paradigms
and there is nothing like a Platonic form

And suddenly there is a dawn I see with my eyes closed and a dusk I can
hear in a shock wave

And I see Jesus moving in a tomb and a Buddha that is skinny
and a Mohammed that never touched a sword
and that if the tomb is not empty there is nothing
that will stop the Adam-splitting begun in the
chambers of the bomb once it falls
splitting the very stars from my vision

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.