Poems for Patriots

i.

We each want bounty
to rise up

out of the ground
all around us

like prairie grass,
an ocean of green,

every troubled barrenness
filled to the edges and

stippled with the sweet
smell of flowers —

those beautiful artists
of attraction —

the pink pompom
of milkweed,

parasol of
soldier’s woundwort,

an aster whirling its
best skirt

around the brilliant sun
of its sexes.

Nature’s effortless
energy surges

through us
in great ghosts,

ripples around us
the fertile fields.

We must remember
to be fragile.

Our heavy hands
keep breaking things

that are hard to fix,
the manual lost.

When I look across
the vast sea of

concrete we’ve poured,
my feet hurt.

I think that I will
build my Ark from dirt,

the sails fashioned
out of pure light.

Truth is, bounty
isn’t given. It’s grown —

one seed after another
by the mother, by the farmer,

that holy snake charmer.
When our blistered lips

play that worn flute,
the good seed sown,

we coax life’s snaked coil
out of the loam.

ii.

My phone buzzes with
notices from the dead.

The screen’s light throws
shadows over my bed.

Another shooting. A war.
A rainforest torn through and

a plantation was born
from the ruin. My heart

breaks every day, but I
get out of bed anyways.

When I walk out the door,
sunlight fills my empty body

with so much artless love —
my god, we

can do this. We can
rise up like the tide —

higher and higher as
the years drift by.

iii.

Our voice is power —
as hard as rock,

delicate as a flower.
When the seas gather

in this dark hour,
their anger heavy,

we must not wilt
behind the levee.

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