The Gods As They Are, On Their Planets - The Poet's Press
The Gods As They Are, On Their Planets - The Poet's Press
The Gods As They Are, On Their Planets - The Poet's Press
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Does it have meaning,<br />
this seed-shagged planet<br />
alive with eyes?<br />
Is earth the crucible,<br />
sandbox of angry gods,<br />
or is it the eye of all eyes,<br />
ear of all ears,<br />
the nerve through which the universe<br />
acquires self-knowledge?<br />
But these are weighty thoughts<br />
for man and mammal!<br />
We are but blood and minerals,<br />
upright for an instant,<br />
conscious for but a moment,<br />
a grainfall of cosmic hourglass.<br />
Yet I am not ephemeral:<br />
I freeze time,<br />
relive moments<br />
chronicle the centuries<br />
re-speak Shakespeare,<br />
beat out the staves of Mozart,<br />
read the same books<br />
my forebears knew<br />
make of old words<br />
my wordy pyramid.<br />
I am the one<br />
snapping the pictures of solar systems,<br />
sending myself<br />
an outside-in self-portrait.<br />
I send my name and signature<br />
on bottles spinning past Uranus.<br />
I am the one who asks, Is it worth it?<br />
I who hear the X-ray wind reply, It is!<br />
I am the one who would not stay in caves,<br />
I was discontent in the treetops.<br />
I wanted to be bird and whale and rocket.<br />
Ever, o ever more mortal now —<br />
— friends falling away like withered leaves —<br />
still I find joy in this subliminal shrine of autumn.<br />
My hand is full of fossil shells<br />
picked up from the lake shore rubble,<br />
scallops enduring with the same rock faith<br />
(its implicit minimum vocabulary):<br />
I live, and the increase of my consciousness<br />
is the span of my life.<br />
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