I ached for dreams that galloped

through my head long ago—

fever dreams of Paul and George,

flying like Superman, in a red cape,

riding the Black Stallion to victory,

bare backed.

I craved the presence of scent—

mosquito repellent,

honeysuckle,

burnt marshmallow.

I longed to be pushed on a swing,

my dirty cotton skirt

flapping like a bird

over my flat chest,

my bare feet pointing

heavenward, head and

ponytail lolling backwards,

a freed flag.

I wished for a luxuriously

disinhibiting quaalude,

a sloppy kiss under

the purple wisteria,

a cold plunge in the

glass-clear Ichetucknee.

I remembered your

struggling gasps,

stertorous, ragged,

my hand before your mouth,

hoping to catch your last breath

and put it back.

The firmament pays

me no mind

as I go about the

wretched business

of forgetting.

A stump full of star flowers,

pink and white delicacies against

a blackened canvas populated by

toppled giants.

After January’s hundred-year ice storm,

the forest floor was littered with corpses,

former survivors of the last great freeze,

the larger trunks, now headless,

roots too shallow to hold fast, upended,

thrusting out straggly into hollow air,

Brought down thunderously by icy crowns

and robes too titanic to bear, crashing and

splintering on earth’s frozen shield.

If a tree falls in the forest,

does anyone hear it scree-eem?

Further down the path, bleeding hearts

wave in tender pink clusters, not

bleeding out but drooping from

stalks rising thin and straight out of

ferny leaves and brown winter decay.

Even in the forest of the mind,

after devastation,

hope flowers.

Yes, the world is dying before our eyes,

        gasping and groaning.

 

This morning, I walk down to the beach to see

       the dead whale,

another one washed up, a minke,

       not a giant, but large enough

that flies and pecking sea gulls make

       no dent in its putrefying mass.

 

Will they bury it or haul it away?

        Years ago, with great fanfare,

they dynamited a dead whale--

       blubber and guts flying to all the

wrong places. Never again.

       We keep learning the art of disposal.

 

Walking up into the rocks, I leave

       monumental death behind,

surprise a blanket of drying sea foam,

       dead plankton, pulverized.

I’ve seen big poufs of dirty bath

       bubbles, sailing and blowing

 

atop waves as they roll into shore.

       Here a frothy cloud deposited

at low tide adorns a large, flat bed of

       volcanic basalt, fresh lava a few hundred

million years ago.

 

Shriveling bubbles glitter in the sun,

        the ancient slab buzzing with hives of

little lights, a field of tiny, uncut diamonds.

 

Rot sparks beauty, carrying all

        our febrile calculations before it.

In an illuminated, landed wave,

        the wafting illusion of life everlasting,

unfurling frail and indefatigable,

       decay-born(e).