A Good Universe

A Good Universe

Flash of wing, dark graceful feathers shriek the sky.
Above now, singing. Shift/beside. Blood-bright red eye.
Sunlight gleams, sharp talented repeating sad refrain
In tortured dreams. Thorn tree poor simple dinner's bane.
Pray no more. Consumption fate of fly and poet, whom the gods destroy.
Not weakly for his memory of pain the cosmos mutters: boy.

Busy monsters, making pointy monuments, becoming higher,
Taller, faster. Breaking locks to catch Apollo's fire.
No short cut right through void which separates, no time
Can keep the sight of tiny flung tin barrel out of mind.
If we so bold can walk the yellow mountains, sure we can...
Even a Neil, cold naked under history's bright lantern, beabled: man.

And softly having trod the regal myth of dark Diana, who
With tired laughing fears still seeks a righteous pathway to?
Oh be not sorry; you have paid and reaped and bought
The T-shirt. Glory ever is and ever was, not sought.
I too have seen the many bowers to his house, opinionated sod.
In pasture green, bright splashing falls, Bear Running: god.

Now tear my heat and chain me to this unreality
Of freedom sweet as pear, tame to provide security
The terrifying fist of Vulcan's orange crushing glow
To harmless pretty mist in gray box, poster child of slow
Time. Gleaming see the output of society pulse bit for bit
Through teeming networks daily to the ocean: shit.

References:

Note added June 2000: Hey, I just noticed that Bruce Cockburn used the busy monster image in If a Tree Falls. I knew he had good taste in poetic references.