MILLENNIAL CURVE: A TORQUED ELLIPSE OR THREE

Not dead weight but live load: the hernia
of history ruptures any calm we carry

to the edge of the horizon. Dead calm.
Lacking owls’ easy spin, our necks wrench

in backward glance—springs shot from age, cricks
grinding, pocking the periphery. Dead springs.

Is it dawn, noon or crepuscule? Every
flashlight speculates when the power fails

us, and in our urge to round off numbers
we make this deadline slow and sticky: one

one-thousand, two one-thousand, ready or
not, here we’re from. Such the dutiful spouse

to excitable earth, sued for abuse,
trying to save it like always with sex

or the opposite of sex, a balling
Malthus of action and restraint. Take steps back.

Carry a seascape in your head to sooth
a teething baby. Let lions sleep a hundred

days without a single spoiling fly. Swallow
diamond pills to vanquish limp from your gaze,

turn the page on tragic with an umbrella
liability policy and a fine-arts

floater. Here’s where things get necessary
heavy: torqued Cor-Ten steel collapses

notions of what’s hard, soft and true . . . how
rust embroiders our assembly line of days

by stitching hurt to love . . . raw beauty plainly
cooked by cycling sun and rain, salt and cloud.

In morning’s middle distance, the tumor
of front-page news begins to shrink and sky

comes clean, all silky and albescent . . .