‘Weather Gone Wild’, September 2012



1.



Orangutan languorous

on the incongruous jungle seat. Mongolian

boy pushes his sister

            on a makeshift swing.

            Frayed ropes, dirty, smiling
faces. Cloudless sky. 	        
Raccoon crawls

            from a ditch

            tempted

                        by a choc-chip cookie.
Romeo Doneza’s city skyline is black and white

through a hole in a freestanding

rooftop door. Blerta Zabergja’s skyline:
smoke-stacked and orange-hazed. She takes

a photograph while she’s photographed.
In deep space, a single egg rests in a nest

            woven by human hands.
A salt white sky

peppered by birds.

A salt white sky

storm-clouded with birds
in the shape of a girl

            who might be dancing.
A snake charmer’s cobra

has choc-caramel markings.

The charmer

                                    in saffron, receding.



2.



Aerial map of America physical.

Black and green.            Warning:
fluorescent roboworm. Death

by slow grinding glow.
Diver in a test tank, a bubbled view

of a shining world above. Space probe
beneath the sea investigates

submerged mountains. A seal

in long, green grass. Man in the probe

wears glasses, his dashboard says
one nine five one seven seven one six two.

To his right, 
            another probe

                        like a drowning printer cartridge.
Many species of unnamed gastropods and shrimps

in thirty-one Brady Bunch squares.     But no one

looks at anyone. A school
            of orange swordtails

another printer cartridge beside a scuba diver
and a massive brain coral.



3.



A Filipino Tansier stares with gremlin eyes.

            The sky

                        aqua, black and yellow. 
Rising dust cloud. Pink and yellow lights

of Phoenix. 
A burning fence pole at Bastrop.
Frozen spray on a four-wheel drive

near Lake Geneva at night. Smiling girl

skates.            In Tennessee, 
lovers in a flood sit on the roof

of a sinking car.    Tornado scarred 
Tuscaloosa from above. Survivors:

hospital and football stadium. Tornado now! 
Black grey brown on a wet road

in Nebraska. An emergency vehicle chases it.
Gushing water chases a Chinese villager

down a stairwell. He’s in military fatigues. 
Levee house at Vichsbury survives a flood. Miles

of brown water then Martian landscape. Bill

Tulloch sits under a tree, hat in his lap:

If you’re proud of your country, you try

            to take care of it. San Saba
River is salt. Friday night’s football team stands

on its field under dusk moon. Kenneth Durst

in the Mason Feed Store watched over

by moose heads and leaning folders: They bought

a lot of hay and feed

            to save at least their young cows. 
One man perched on a windmill appears to fix it

while another, half-way up, stares at him.