USA

neil_sproul@hotmail.com

The County That Once Was Orange

This morning, on the way in, I marked the concrete arteries that have quartered and requartered 
this county into its last green plots. And that where there were trees spanning 
leafy towards the orange sun…now there are none. But the few overlooked and overgrown. 
Groveless, in alleys between homes, their shoulders are forced into the same 
half-bend of their toes. And somewhere beneath the surface they dig in deeper. 

This morning, I drove the light fandango beneath the string of poles, 
their light gray and green and flooding. And next to me the mountains rolled; as they'd managed 
to grate the last of the smog away. Their faces craggy and peaked in the pink new light. 
And above me the poles strung themselves along for miles…nothing left to hold on to 
but the same bird each day. Their bodies stretched to a perfect hawk. 

And I know that tonight the TVs will flash our lives away. That outside, the dogs will bark further 
and further apart. And that somewhere, deep in the canyons, the coyotes will echo themselves 
into dark.

Critical Mass

"The amount of substance necessary for an atomic, chain reaction to start".

That night, facing the sky, both of us still salty
From the body that crashed softly in next to us,
We were reading God's Braille. 
Grasping for dippers, handles on meaning 
And you consoled me -
That we were really just connecting dots to make nothing:
"So many seem to be burning but have really died years ago".
We were watching the ghostly remains of butterflies
Flutter their wings at the fiery eye of the lamppost,
And I said, "Like so many others I know...they're just straining towards 
The thing that could kill them".

Because, I believe, when speaking of lures such as love
All understanding, like turn-of-the-century water,
Must be tossed out the window -
There's just no place for it in the house 
Of the soul.

And then, you confessed you were no less 
Than another astute believer in the domino effect,
That celestial bodies have no weight unless coupled with proper timing -
As if our minds were strict metronomes we could set
To discipline the weak inner-strings of our hearts...

My heart - that I find as incalculable and as graceless 
As the fall of a meteorite, 
Razing the rosebush in the garden, leveling the apples on the tree -
Smoldering, I have nothing left to give you. 

For each of our words, when offered to the other, leaves us empty and cold
As the water poured on the crippled soldier 
In the desert. One day, too long after, 
He unpeels the slits of his sandbaked eyes, enough to reveal: 
The wet, long awaited body of another mirage.

And stops straining, for a moment, to lie on his back - like we're doing now, 
And continue dreaming.

The Man On The Moon

A miracle, they call it 
The miracle of life:

At the gate, in the darkness
You waited for me,
Soft, prawn-like and curled
Only your fingers impatiently blinking
From their small, white fists.

All became vigilance,
The days dragging themselves slowly
Across the calendar,
All movement dwindling to the 
Faint, clock-like kicking. 

And only poetry seemed fitting 
So I read to you... 
"For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you",
From the rocking chair, from the bow of my hips
I endlessly cradled you;

Unaware that the fishy-black darkness
Was already beginning to swallow, 
That bird-thin, already broken 
Still secured to your single cord,
It would already be too late by the time they got to you.

Then, less than three months later,
On a broken, silver screen,
I watched the moon's blue head emerge
Flickering, and somewhere deep beyond the stars
Science took it's first, small step: 

A miracle, they call it.

© Copyright, 2000, Marlo Bester-Sproul.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.