2026-09-01
Wondering What
from the book Shy Lands
This country would look like
through the rearview mirror,
past Wall Street and all
its cargo hold.
What would it look like
in improbable balance?
A harvested heirloom crop
of our lost code of ethics,
a walk away from the hunger
for history sweet-frosted. Thawing
of truths packaged up nice and square
and hidden in the freezer aisle.
What would it be like to all kneel
in the garden of no border?
Bank the long beans, invest in catalpas,
mutual fund salsa with all those tomatillos,
weigh the equity narrative of the wisteria,
follow the penny diminuendo of hummingbird,
full on revenue up those blackberries,
sip every retirement fund syllable of pomegranate,
forever withdraw savings
from the jukebox of the mockingbird.
Allow that kind of liquid warbling, harm
graduated over into the transmuting light
of maybe a lily,
or penumbral moon,
a greedy hope beyond the damage.
To fall not from division or betrayal,
but fall, as in some kind of love, to tender spaces,
lush with a different kind of thunder.