Let’s take this blow-up Zodiac
to the calving front:
first past the moraines archiving
where the iceberg stood, where
stands the iceberg now,
tracking the nine mile
recession with a running
app—a quick pace too fast
for me—thru frigid
water but not quite cold
enough to ice over. We ruin
so much. Yet I love
the name for the birth
of ice into ocean. I love
those slight nameless
flowers in cracked sidewalks.
The old people on the desolate
ledge jump into the fjord, burying
their burden in deep, cold water.
A man dressed like a Viking
in a little plastic hat gives me
green and purple glow sticks.
You say it’s like I put the aurora
around my wrist, but I think
you only say that to be nice.
One can’t trim the sails
of an inflatable boat.
Smog turns the sunset
into such a night. Let’s steal away.
My poems won’t keep us
cold in hell. My poems won’t
keep our mouths from filling
with water so you sign
us up for one-way tickets
to Mars. It’s not far enough,
I complain, let’s go farther.
This galaxy is doomed. And yet
we keep humming. You
take me in the same Zodiac
to Aldebaran. The air thins
but things are bigger, we’re smaller,
we need less. I only regret
the nameless flowers,
that I never saw your eyes
change color under the borealis.