-->
people in twos orbit the thick clean stores,
their muscular viruses, hot to survive,
slide from hand to hand along the franklins;
some horses huddle near a live oak, still against the rain
or stand, wet through, eating slowly cold
green grass, haunches shining amber;
like a girl who doesn’t know her beauty, oil
presses upward through the shale, sea floor, sand, a
blue-black rainbow glistening unguent will;
a line of sunlight, dirty, gold, spreads wide
along a hilltop for a last few seconds crepuscule
two walking stop, stop talking, and stand still;
in a song about the future kids are yelling
how their bodies crash deliciously
together, how they’ll be this crash forever; while
Mohamed Bouazizi, Peace Be On Him, lights a fire. dies.
steam, like incense from his body, rises to the sky
and spreads a thousand miles on the sirocco, and despots fall.
At home, two mallards sleep in cedar shadow, heads
tucked under wing, his iridescent emerald, hers
the color of her body, brown and small
their eyes at rest, the beak’s full hardness
sheathed in sleep; dreaming silver flashes close
below the wave, of bodies given, never asked
(what would you ask for?) only
light, Mohammed said (the Other, Peace), “light
on my eyes, upon my skin, light in my mouth”
upon my pores, my dendra, capillaries, cells,
and mitochondria in their dance, light on the double
spiral and the one who climbs that stair
light on tiny drops of water rising through the air
February 2011
Revolutions in Tunis, Cairo, Tripoli
may all be free
∞