A Pedantry

Many of the great men—Buddha, Saint Augustine,
Jefferson, Einstein—had a woman and child
they needed to ditch. A little prologue
before the great accomplishments could happen.

From nothing came this bloody turnip
umbilicaled to the once-beloved,
only now she's transformed like a Hindu god
with an animal snout and too many limbs.

You'd rather board a steamer with chalk dust on your pants
or sit under a bo tree and be pelted by flaming rocks,
renounce the flesh
or ride off on a stallion—

there is no papoose designed for such purposes,
plus the baby would have to be sedated.
Sorry.
We don't want the future to fall into the hands of the wrong -ists!

That's how civilization came into being
for us who remained in the doorways of here,
our companions those kids who became chimney sweeps, car thieves,
and makers of lace.

By day we live in the shadows of theories; by night
the moon holds us in its regard
when it doesn't have more important business
on the back side of the clouds.

On the Chehalis River

All day long the sun is busy, going up and going down,
and the moon is busy, swinging the lasso of its gravity.
And the clouds are busy, metamorphing as they skid—
the vultures are busy, circling in their kettle.

And the river is busy filling up my britches
as I sit meditating in the shallows until my legs go numb.
Upstream I saw salmon arching half into the air:
glossy slabs of muscle I first thought were seals.

They roiled in a deeper pocket of the river,
snagged in a drift net on Indian land.
Trying to leap free before relenting to the net
with a whack of final protest from the battered tail.

They'll be clubbed, I know, when the net's hauled up
but if there were no net they'd die anyway when they breed.
You wonder how it feels to them: their ardent drive upstream.
What message is delivered when the eggs release.

A heron sums a theory with one crude croak; the swallows
write page after page of cursive in the air. My own offering
is woozy because when their bodies breached the surface
the sun lit them with a flash that left me blind.