Saturday, July 16, 2022

Martha Ronk

 


           Joan Mitchell.  Noel (1962)


what next

what might turn into what     grow into what as out of mud

what place might humans have      in the turbulence

so awkwardly creaturely     lumpish with legs

switching language around     wishing it could out of nothing

on the phone she says     moldy bread was put on wounds

—civil war wounds or mushrooms or dirt—

there’s garbage in the Balboa creek watershed     chip bags

Styrofoam clams    plastic this’s and that’s congealing

someday     computer altered frog cells could eat them

yet the transitoriness of all we know we are    fractures us

damns our creaturely minds     self-destructive in intent

crows must have been something else before     they’re so self-assured

skies marked up with ink pens     they roll around on ant hills

open up locked boxes     laugh at us clumsy sorts

even ground water doesn’t last     we once imagined

oceans swirling    unending underneath     water into water

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