My object had been to show what I'd found, nothing
I'd been looking for. The inscription on the slave's tomb,
For instance, was translatable as "I am well-favored,
I who possess a tomb that is better than freedom."
One can't help but suspect that the living slave
Would have disagreed, but, being freely dead, why not,
What the hell, sure, let the owner's paid poet compose
Whatever the owner wants on my grave. Death is better
Than that marginal distinction among the slaves to living
Called for some freedom. All week I had been noticing
The rapturous plenitude of the unmerciful world
Versus the petty meanness of all my social interactions.
In between this, this, this canyon-carving schism of perception
Was more and less of me, caught right in the middle of the overload,
Flash-flood debris that canyons funnel, that carves the canyons away.
On the back of local Park Service shuttle buses there's a public service
Poster of a horrific, hurtling catastrophe of rocks, mud, branches
And whole logs lunging up at you, the hard, wild horses of the dark jinn
Over the caption, "Think you can swim in this?" Thanks
For helpfully, humanly scaring me, but there's no sidestepping
This universe in this universe, so, yes, I do, I will have to, I can.
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