Two Poems
Offshore
I wanted a ring with a carved Indian
face, or a horse hair instrument
that droned, but the Gulf was beaten
with oil in its gills and feathers,
a desperate mix, viscous and black.
Give me the horse skull,
keep the credit card.
Give me a great blue adventure,
I’ll just stand and stare.
The pelican grounded,
the sand like cement,
the open wound of our planet
cauterized just enough,
the shallow drill heading for bone.
Nuclear
The dark, steel drums of waste
sinking beneath the mountain.
The hot circuitry moaning
through the grid, alive, but forced
to move.
These things wash over me.
A crowd draws in, closer
to the vast desert, collapse
like sinkholes, into fathoms
of what I want,
what you want, what we think
we need.
Tell me of the arctic hare, the caribou,
the sinking ice levelling
habitat and home.
Silver and gold cities that blanket
the country, now return to dust.