How they make it look easy: the slow traffic of cormorants.
The lounging calm of a lion like abandoned property.
Meanwhile, humans and their hammerstones.
What’s hidden is how we’re more like dandelions than dragonflies.
What’s hidden is where the music goes once it escapes
its strings, its hollow avenues of sound.
How far has the first note traveled since the first note escaped
the mouth of a siamang or whale? Maybe when we die
we get to travel where the music lives,
the music of every heavy metal band, the melodies of our ancestors,
the refrains of raptors. There must be a way to save us
from ourselves. There must be a cloud or shroud
or asteroid belt, a minor planet that can knock us back
onto a non-deadly trajectory. Neruda suggests
we should all stop. Imagine if we all
stopped, walked out into the late afternoon light to greet
the small pink blooms on a gnarled tree in a yard
that could be anyone’s.
