Two Poems

Equations
 
You make them up,
the tiny alliances
between having kids
and having trees,
between kids
in the trees and
their hands
painted into
the disappearing
shape of light.
You make the
connection between
a lot of hormones
coursing through you,
a lot of chaos at the door.
Between the fish
gone limp and the
child in a heap of
darkness. Your darkness.
You try to tame
the tremble
at the bottom of the
bucket. You collect
hunger stones
at the river’s edge:
“If you see me, weep,”
they say. Dutiful, you weep,
and every tree has a door,
every door a handle.
Opened once and we
all disappear.

***
 

Tiny Ransom

     I
 
When I say tired, I mean tired.
When I say terror, think terror.
The balsam fir is getting another burn,
last night’s scourge, now ash,
now blossom.
 
     II
 
Forgive me, I am literal when
I say the nervous system is nervous —
catching itself on all the little cruelties
meant as kindnesses, little kindnesses
that conceal their cruelty.
 
     III
 
Do not tell me, “you don’t look so tired.”
Listen — 
A large hand is at work, and bewilderment
is a ploy to keep us pale. Spectacle is no excuse.
Metaphor will not rest until wrested.
 
     IV
 
In the fragment placed between order and undoing,
may we have a momentary stay against confusion?
 
     V
 
How for a tiny ransom, we keep our words
to ourselves.