The History of the Future

The History of the Future

make the picture in the future

the history of the future

4-line house, 2-line tent

life upon a clown

you are free so what to do

snake, monkey, repurposed lion

without defiance what forms

do you carve?

hemisphere, triangle, slash

if everything needs to be lines

inside or outside the lens

g o g g l e s a r e b l a c k s o

the moon sheds dim light

on an oil rig, water beneath the rig

the toe you unsock & dip in the water

socking & shoeing are not commutative

asylums, with or without crayons

tattoos lasered or faded

home — what is, who wants, why?

how to move forward (backward)

dream space, every place

better you work outside

the beard, the blind

image to word to string of words

flagged down, the baby bird

death is not Zeno’s paradox

point & fledge

to love dreams

is to love knowing you can’t know

precise & absurd

aspens grow between floor tiles

rush back

as if to prove you’re safe

feral runs out, runs back

stops at the median

lopes toward the traffic light

the laminate beam

spans the high ceiling

bored through in three places

purple cabbage straws

tight-coiled quinoa

orange beans

all day, you said,

you walk from window to window

panning for light

water is sound

green & brown shine

white froth & flow

wet is optional

unless you are the river

rock pebbly, like dried-out sponge

make the garden ammonite

omega, hourglass

flowers orange, yellow, red

make light flow from the center

along lines of blossom anatomy

charred by, rimmed with

scepters of hollyhock

rosemary, daylily

succulents, artichoke

cosmos wavers

crisscross laid in pavers

with thyme to flavor soles

let the central chamber

raise a mesh-clad tent

coral snake undulant

the antique shop’s

white window dressing

of rocker, wedding dress, birdcage

a green-gold deposit

crowns your hair — bird gift

alchemy’s prima materia

you found the ceiling

now find the floor, full
& empty are much the same

either you prefer to be elder

or you have no choice

childhood green

rough-barked trees w/

long narrow leaves

spruce, pine, maple, walnut

tattoos articulate crimson

& hard-won blue

cedar, cypress, yew

big-mouth sharks

leap from pools, your dreams

peaceful, collegial

your other half present but evacuated

rowdy dogs & children swarm

the breakage inconsequential

arbitrage, dismissal

spaces moan when you cross them

urban meadow of lupine, of sorrel

accumulate archipelago

red ring rims a spare half moon

one sound, a bird

A. R. Ammons

A. R. Ammons [The Famous People]

from A. R. Ammons Collected Poems:

Interval

Coming to a pinywoods
       where a stream darted across the path
like a squirrel or frightened blacksnake
I sat down on a sunny hillock
           and leaned back against a pine
and picked up some dry pineneedle bundles from the ground
and tore each bundle apart a needle at a time
    It was not Coulter's pine
    for coulteri is funnier looking
    and not Monterey either
and I thought God must have had Linnaeus in mind
orders of trees correspond so well between them
and I dropped to sleep wondering what design God
had meant the human mind to fit
           and looked up and saw a great bird
warming in the sun high on a pine limb
tearing from his breast golden feathers
    softer than the new gold that
    dropped to the wind one or two
    gently and touched my face
I picked one up and it said
       The world is bright after rain
for rain washes death out of the land and hides it far
beneath the soil and it returns again cleansed with life
           and so all is a circle
and nothing is separable
Look at this noble pine from which you are
almost indistinguishable it is also sensible
       and cries out when it is felled
and so I said are trees blind and is the earth black to them
Oh if trees are blind
           I do not want to be a tree
A wind rising of one in time blowing the feather away
forsaken I woke
and the golden bird had flown away and the sun
had moved the shadows over me so I rose and walked on