Plaint

 

December 15, 1986  (I was 42)

 

         Plaint

A year of less than ritual.

It is a dry vision.

Every chant is sewn into a basket.

All the prayers have become catholic.

No fat revolutionary was ever victorious.

No revolution gets old.

 

The Big Picture is so large and dangerous

it’s a wonder any go there.

Our time is so officially gray.  The buildings,

Washington D.C. is a testament in concrete.

At their officious best the elected

attempt to look like buildings.

 

It is a dry vision, this American perspective,

this telescope over our eye,

each and every with his own view

looking out to everything out there made big and close,

everything out there taken by tradition of staked claim,

protected at a cost within concrete fortresses.

 

Insular democracy, expand like breath.

Accepted inspiration is our lungs’ strength.

The fluent release of exhaled exhilaration

pulses wind off the continent

with an Aeolian sweetness more alluring than any threat.

And the charm is the desire to do no more than draw another.