"Bread," "Cosmic Alignment," and "Full Speed Ahead"

Bread

Where civilization begins,
weeds grow.

Cosmic Alignment

We wander from star to star
looking for planets
in Goldilocks’ zones,
 
for meltwater and radio signals,
methane and carbon dioxide,
fragments of life shored
 
a trillion miles away, rushing
into existence, urgently leaving
evidence on petrified rock,
 
on gold or diadems,
on obelisks and menhirs,
standing stones, anything
 
that might pass eternal scrutiny;
but then, to transplant that find
and scatter that seed upon another
 
un-expecting cluster
of ur-cells who go about making
their own private business; yet,
 
without the misconduct
to cultivate land and sea and sky,
without the epithets to grace temples—
 
and, just as one might enter an oyster:
that slipping into the gullet
followed by an instant of delight,
 
suggesting the saline rush of oceans,
the mouthwash of moon tides—
and once again, the rush of planets
 
meeting their end-time
in the crush of a quasar;
or the ramifications of a tongue
 
upon the devilish surfaces of hot asphalt;
within the particulates of anoxic fumes—
know this: the Bull of Heaven
 
will return to fight the same battle
over and over, until in the end,
finally, the hero always wins.

Full Speed Ahead

On a morning
like this one
 
billows of smoke
rise into the sky.
 
The factory has started
production again.
 
You can smell it
entwined in the oxygen.
 
Soon the rivers will be
running with dead fish again.
 
Down at your feet,
a bumblebee struggles to keep aloft;
 
she weaves through weeds and out
into the scrub snarled in plastics.
 
How to untangle
a spell twisted like this, again?