Two Poems
Forest
There you go
walking in the woods
as usual
ignoring the trees . . .
The fifteen kinds
of trees
you refuse
to lodge in your skull.
Here's the stand
of Norway spruce
mostly dead.
Someone's bad idea.
We are going
to monetize
everything
so value shines
clear as the sun.
Just because,
things happen
Just because
things happened
doesn't absolve
whoever's alive
The future's
a lure
& hungry fish bite.
Curious.
You want
a solid Lutheran hymn
to praise the given
under the sign of salvation.
God an organ
few now know
how to play.
Diapason,
Aeoline Celeste—
So many stops
to make the sound
of what used to be
the greatest machine
He knew all the names
and if he appeared
to the forest people
he appeared as a rainbow bird
on the supreme tree
There you go
making images
because you don't know the names.
Folk School
I am going to Folk School
to learn how to be
one of my people.
Dogsledders, that is.
Paragliders.
Eaters of carrots
and hamburgers.
We are going to map
the genome
of my people
which is an excellent people
its every pupil
earning a gold star
for human being
in a cosmos full
of people and black holes.
Look there are my people
on the rim of disaster!
They're frozen forever
while elsewhere
the work of living goes on
in a space-time continuum
the ages haven't yet broken.
My people humble people
who expect nothing.
Maureen N. McLane
Some Say
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2017 by Maureen N. McLane
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission