The Day Is Like Wide Water, Without Sound*

Run what leaves

Your mind through your heart

Before it exits your mouth.

There is a source.

It can be corrupted.

The source is all goodness.

It is corrupted by fear and misplaced passion.

People who do terrible things

Are corrupting this goodness.

Yet they seek the goodness

Of the source at the same time.

It is a corruption of love.

Every moment is sacred.

There is deep peace in each instance.

Fear prevents you from experiencing it.

The chrysalis opens halfway.

Sticky adhesions reveal wings,

As the butterfly struggles.

(Written on the day of the Sandy Hook shootings.)

(*From Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning")

In the Waiting Area at LaGuardia

Among America’s capitalist

Cowboys and cowgirls,

Decked out in our

Post-Millennium garb —

Leather, denim, slip-off shoes,

White wires sprouting from our heads,

Faces burrowed into our screens.

We all seem bemused

At this hour, in this time.

Menacingly, two dark-skinned soldiers

Strut the floor,

Milling about the baggage check,

The noses of their AK-47s pointed downward,

Cloaked in uniforms gone tan,

As the battle for the American Way

Heads from jungle to desert.