To slide alone between dimensions—one
a heated, translucent effervescence
dancing like string theories upon swirling
carbonated waters of the whirlpool,
the other—cool cerulean silence
immersed in liquid beneath a sky blue
octagon of light, fixed like a star, a hue
beckoning enjoy this Roman sterling.
Signage Take time for yourself reeks well-off absurd
when lives hang on the cusp of a gilded hook.
To the battered Ukrainian woman,
husband bound, dead as George Floyd on the curb,
what is a states’ knee pressed into a neck
but snorted ejaculation of power.
How can a grieving Bach chaconne, centuries old,
remind that darkened hearts will no light hold?
That projectiles kill bodies, not a people’s soul?
What assurance a violin, like the final call
of the Lord God Bird, last of its kind, drawn
above such wreckage, such frigid, intentional
crushing of hive and honey into angry sewage,
will lead us to some hidden bower of soft dawn,
some companion at an endpoint to sing us whole?
