Barton

The cold equations lie to you. They lie

Not in themselves (the math is right, of course)

But in their will to power. Asking why

The cold equation rules -- is it by force? --

Reveals, or can reveal, a deep design

That someone's interest calculates and sets

To make the cold equation seem a sign

Of universal meaning. But who lets

The cold equation go on being cold?

If we all know the cold equation's flaws

Who benefits from our failing to fold

Our own protections round its jagged laws?

The cold equations are still true, still cool

But people chose to let equations rule.

fishes

I wish I were not scavenging my time 

Robbing Peter to pay Paul, and making

Each little word and every single rhyme 

A muscle torn, reused and ever-aching.

Imagine that the time ahead of me

Were smooth and open, free to fill at leisure:

Impossible the possibility

And endless the end-stopped, creative pleasure.

But it has not been so, will not be either;

I cannot count on time to while away.

I am a child teething without teether

Gnawing my knuckle bloody to allay

The pain of what is rising from below

And has no patience as it strives to grow.

test

My heels dig in so much the ground is broken

Beneath my shoes. I hate to lose. I will,

If asked for an opinion when awoken

Defend 'til I sleep, and even still

Grumble in dreams about how I am right.

My knee, once jerked, will not concede its place

To any; I am my opinion's knight

And fight for it 'gainst all foes I might face.

Yet even I, who hate to say I'm wrong,

Who close my ears and la la la along

When anyone corrects what I have said 

Will tell these presidents the way they've acted

Requires that their statements be retracted

Before some student protester lies dead.

bubble

I hear you in the other room

Your voice reminds me of your smile

It chases off my after-gloom

As I remember in a while

You will come out and sit with me

As we companionably read

Beside the dog, and drink our tea.

I think of this with utter greed.

There is no joy I wish for more

No comfort higher, greater grace

Than listening to our dog snore

While looking at your smiling face

Nose deep inside an open book

All unaware each time I look.

O Beautiful

I never understood the waves before;

It always seemed a silly little song.

To speak of waves of grain? It must be wrong.

The water always seemed to me much more

Than any field could be. How could it store

The slightest sense of surge, to bear along

A boat, and break? A farm is strong,

But like a wall, not like a wave, I swore.

Yet here, as night casts shadows on the snow

The wheat (unwaving yet, as it must grow)

Reminds me of the ocean rippling free

No waves as yet, but still an energy

That my sea-sense already seems to know

And recognizes past solidity.

Chanukah

Flicker little flame

Build a little light

In God's holy name

Last throughout the night.

Help us to remember

Long and far away

How once in December

Light for but one day

Stretched itself to eight

'Til more oil was found

To re-dedicate

Holy, sacred ground.

Let us not now be

Those from whom we're free 

Mire

I do not have the brain to be myself.

I grope towards me, but cannot seem to reach.

My soul sometimes seems put up on a shelf

Where from the box my insides slowly leach.

I want to think, but when I try I grind

Like gears too long un-oiled or unused.

There is an awful jamming in my mind

Where what was understanding is confused.

I used to leap from thought to thought with ease

Where now to say I plod would be too much;

A keyboard doesn't work with sticky keys

Nor do I think. I can't release the clutch

Enough to even settle in a gear.

Even reverse would be relief from here.

Decorah

Decorum has it's time and place, it's true.

When equals speak to equals, or when power

Speaks down to those who it tells what to do

That is decorum's right and proper hour.

But when the weak speak out against the strong,

Those trodden down against the treading heel;

When commons makes its case against the crown

And those beneath resist the rolling wheel

Their words are theirs, and, if indecorous,

The content, not the setting, matters more.

There is no right to triumph without fuss;

Decorum's no excuse to crush the poor.

If you object to what they say, say why;

Don't hide behind decorum. It's a lie.

Alberta

The sun is unprepared to burn 

In other's smoke. It turns too red

Too early; barely halfway through

The day, which seems at times the dusk

Already. But it takes its turn

Behind the forests, too soon dead,

Which we are breathing in, and grew

Only to make themselves a husk.

Our city is their living urn

And will continue, they have said,

To be so; this will be the new

Reality. We breath the musk

Of forests, but our lungs aren't clean

We breath in red, and never green.

Floodtimes

River Drive is gone. I say this not

To cause you any undeserved alarm

But just to catch and simplify a thought:

The river has stretched out its mighty arm

And taken back its own. The lowland plain

On either side belongs, not to mankind

(Though we may occupy it in the main)

But to the river. Where we have designed

Our dams and levees, we merely delay

Not stem its great resumption of itself.

The time will come, though not perhaps today,

When it will rehydrate the bottom shelf

And leave the Rock alone to peek its head

Above the Mississippi's watershed.