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Splendor
Dec 20th, 2001 by jens


We stepped out our back door into splendor:
– the rain-choked hills casting off their muddy carapace of topsoil
– uprooted trees shedding their last dead leaves like ticker-tape
– all of up heading for down.
All the wet rot of the rotating Earth converged on our yard
but was held back by cinderblock walls
with a splash.

Our house lay alone at the foot of a brown slope devoid of landmarks:
a virgin field of stumps, poles, and spinning tires.
Anything might be planted in that field and grow.
Any possibility might be granted in a new equilibrium.
Like two children we held hands and stepped over the wall,
digging our bare feet into dark humus, taking root.

Polar Star
Oct 30th, 2001 by jens


The horizon folded down its blackness.
Overhead curled exalted green clouds
of Sun-born particles spiraling in.

Now upward in an arc, tied to the long invisible armature of the Pole,
flew my humble cardboard tube of Earthly minerals,
in one moment transmuted into circlets and spheres of sparks —
dark materials achieving by dint of effort
glory surpassing the Sun’s electrons,
if only for a second.

Hood thrown back I howled a warning to low-flying angels.
The dogs lay panting in the snow, unimpressed.

Glass Lizard
Jun 21st, 1993 by jens

The beach that fall was overrun by glass lizards; I had never seen them before. I knew there had been none at the beach when we had visited during the summers (I could remember four summers, and my parents said there had been more.)
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The Cow Telescope
Mar 3rd, 1991 by jens

WHEN I stick my head out of the skylight and look to the left I can see the Cow Telescope atop its hill, red light at the tip blinking to ward off low-flying aircraft. You can see it from Interstate 280; from the back of my parents’ Volvo I used to watch it as we drove past, a big metal parabolic dish pointed at something in the sky, on a grassy hill alone except for the odd ruminating cow. And so it was obviously the Cow Telescope, searching for radio emissions from peaceful cow civilizations across the galaxy—Read the rest of this entry »

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