I don’t often sweat the big picture. I’m more focused on the small and nearby. But some nights I don’t sleep well and then night thoughts connect the dots for me and I hear the voice of Afrofuturist poet and jazzman Sun Ra say it in his outside voice: “This Planet is Doomed.” All I can say is “Hope not.”
Open Winter
All night the wind worked its way,
transforming snow into snowmelt,
showing here a patch of muddy soil
and there a broken limb of pine.
The tracks that deer left in the yard
grow wide as if Sasquatch roamed
here. Ice fell from eaves, unremarked,
as icebergs calve off from Greenland.
I would say winter gives way, had it
ever really taken hold. I worry when
the weather goes strange, when the
wind chime bells all through the night.
And they say I’m right to worry, not just
for this winter in this place, but for all
the winters in all the world. Our powers
might grow Biblical, but we are no angels.
The West and the North burn each year;
in the South what doesn’t drown flies off
on the wind. Some say pay no mind–it’s
natural, or it’s Jesus, or just in your head.
Assholes. I feel an awful future coming,
like an asteroid that dogs Earth’s orbit.
It’s more a matter of we know not when,
and but a slim chance that we know not if.
Truth, brother!