The Densities

The years pass over themselves like leaves filling budding branches,
rain girdling then flooding the base of the tree where its roots drink
listening to the voices of thunder,
seeing the yellow and white eyes of lightning ignite black sky;

or a man or woman pay with the coin
embossed with Maria Theresa’s face
that nomads covet as the price
of life in oases where water’s sold,

a coin completely worthless in the bordertowns,
sky jagged in the south, a burst of wind
wrecking frail stick walls and their plastic shelter falls
as cars go by, never stopping, headed for the city

a thousand miles away. Far north the crowds of Canada flow
to the lakes where the dying come to renew life
in their broken cells. There is hope–so it’s called–
that death’s wilderness never be among the known

densities. Emptiness yawns. We call through the dread silences
to wraiths, our soundings spilling to the killing floor, abattoirs
of Pandemonium . . . When was that ever more than a name
coined by blind Milton to buttress what no one knows . . . 

(8 May 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander