Fact 2: that the sun needs no driver
is abundantly clear. That brilliant mess
in the sky is as self-sustaining as a sunflower field
left to seed itself. Phaethon’s bang
blessed it with enough momentum to move
of its own will. Ahh! The wonders of hubris!

Fact 3: this son of a god’s hubris,
this youth intoxicated would be driver,
upset with his ungod unman moves
this god-man game of chess. Oh what a mess!
In an instant we are more than man and still less than god. Bang!
We are hunted deer stranded in an open field.

Fact 4: We must look to our scorched fields
and devise means of resuscitation. Yes, hubris!
Since the gods gave up order not with a bang
but a son’s feeble plea, we will be our own drivers
and through our own invention look to this mess.
God, like man, is unpredictable- we cannot know his moves.

I say leave Zeus and Phoebus to their own celestial moves.
This is the time! We have the field!
All the gods have given us is mess;
we must find order to survive. Hubris?
Scoff at the word! Fact 5: If we take the reins, be the driver
of this lesser chariot, guaranteed it won’t end in a bang,

but with irrigated fields and food for our feasts. You want a bang?
Watch the way the blacksmith moves;
listen to his hammer on the anvil. Fact 6: we are drivers.
With our own hands we sow the seeds and care for our fields.
What the puffed up gods call hubris
is only a practical desire to avoid further mess.

Let’s hear the hammer bang close this meeting. To our fields!
So mistreated by Phoebus’ foolish moves and Phaethon’s hubris
Come. The plow needs drivers- we must tidy the gods’ mess.

Maintaining thirty-eight degrees, more or less,
despite the rain that drove through your jacket
(further evidence of things beyond my control)
you got into your two-door car, and I walked home.

I remember the rain soaking your gray jacket,
my heart counting its usual seventy beats per minute,
you in your car for two, me walking home
pretending that answers are things I never look for.

Beating seventy times a minute, my heart,
withstanding one hundred and twenty pounds of pressure,
pretends that answers are things I never look for,
even in the small waters of the ears that hold us up.

hold tablets of sulphur
on their tongues. We’ve eaten

the bread out of the kitchen
and the eggs

have all been cracked, the little
bowls of their shells

filled with garbage.
Maybe it’s true, somewhere

there are still thunderstorms,
and maybe there will be

other summers for drowning.
No one hears me say

every wall in this house
is pimpled with tumors.

No one hears me say
I know the sky is not falling.

It is lowering itself slowly
down on top of us.

No one bleeds in fairy tales
except by sword or axe or
shards of glass falling from the sky.
If bleeding occurs, towers are built
and hedges grown so full of thorns
they blind those trying to enter.
Spindles are hidden
lest they prick the innocent.
Wooden feet replace red shoes.

Tattoo the letter on your breast.
Lay on the bed in wild profusion,
splayed ribbons bought with blood.

They say you looked back
but you never did.

I stooped to pick up
the tears you shed
and placed them in my own eyes

I listened as you played your lyre
and sang in the meadows —
first in sad solitude, mourning for me

later in village squares
where the people set down their
hammers and brooms
and gathered around you.

I listened as she came to share your melodies;
My own voice sang along
even as the weeds grew in my throat,
as the water lilies bloomed over my lips
so that my songs would not reach you

Still I stayed close
as my body transformed
into the river that gazed
upon the house you built without me

the hearth where you sit, wife and
children around you
floating like ghosts on your songs

Won’t you even look up
if I come to the door
if I stand and sing on the threshold?

Won’t you even notice when the wind
rips the roots from this house?
When the earth rises up
and we both vanish for good?

2.
still waterlogged at midsummer
rain and gum-booted children
squelch littered lawns
and beer cans and plastic bags and styrofoam packs
and broken bottles
take over a landscape of accidents

3.
under a sky swollen as yesterday’s
sweet gum and whitebeam and maple and ash
drizzle autumnal gold
rain and ripe apples splash
into your hands
against which you have no defence

4.
now the lamp’s on and the winter drapes
drawn across rain-lashed glass
conceals grey trees grey fences
while cars hiss wetly down the road to wherever
you’re going
as you knew you would