THE ALIEN

I'm back again scrutinizing the Milky Way
.........of your ultrasound, scanning the dark
..................matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say
.........is chockablock with quarks & sparks,
gravitons & gravitini, photons & photinos. Our sprout,

who art there inside the spacecraft
.........of your ma, the time capsule of this printout,
..................hurling & whirling towards us, it's all daft
.........on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens,
our Martian, our little green man, we're anxious

to make contact, to ask divers questions
.........about the heaavendom you hail from, to discuss
..................the whole shebang of the beginning&end,
.........pre-big-bang untime before you forget the why
and lie of thy first place. And, our friend,

to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we'd die
.........for you even, that we pray you're not here
..................to subdue us, that we'd put away
.........our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share
our world with you, little big head, if only you stay.

 

 

THE SHIP OF BIRTH

For months your crib is docked waiting for you,
........laden with a shower of gifts:
Hand-knit boots with suede soles, mounting drifts
................of rompers, bibs, hats and a slew
................of other offerings laid on your ship of birth
With the ark story embroidered all about.
In this berth the creatures have mostly mirth-
....ful faces: the cachinnating chickadees, the stout stoat,
....the grinning elephant trunk-bailing the boat,
....the droll owl, the odd rainbow trout,
....the one-humped camel you might think is pregnant
........on its back, the polar bear yodelling upon
..................a melting green berg, the avuncular ant,
not to speak of the circus of unrecorded creatures on
your kid attire. Is this saying, unbeknownst to us,
that we gather around the baby
....The Great Circus of the Earth:
........the flying hippopotamus,
........the foetus-like manatee, the dork-stork,
........the delirious giraffe...
................not just a sappy laugh,
but to illuminate their dearth
and our sapien dodo-ing as we fish-mouth sorry
sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry...?

Our little lambkin, waxwing, luckling...
.....all the cordial choir are Noah-calling you now:
the lovelice, the leech of paradise, the how-now-down-cow,
the Forever Gone Bird, the Dolly sheep, the flying
kiwi, the crying with laughter jackass, the pronghorn,
the bristleless porcupine, the schizophrenic platypus,
.......he licorice-black crow, the rhinoceros:
................that ancestor of the unicorn
.......................with an overgrown thorn-horn.

Listen the horn, the horns are blowing,
trumpeting you, our dear humacorn,
beckoning you onto the ark
.........out of your first watery dark.
Hurry now, Hurry now baritones the polar bear
.........Our icebergs are melting out here.
Quick Quick, the duck sections quack.
.........Darn, darn,
basso-bleats the goat, stomping time with his hoof
.........as the chorus raises the roof:
All aboard, all aboard, our poor wee bairn.