Insect Population Decline
Let’s clear the air; silent nights and clean windshields
Evenings without citronella candles burning
And hear I sit, yearning
For an evening full of life
As the bug zapper zips and pizzes
And the whiskey in my brain fizzes
and pops. My missus calls me inside
and the night comes to a close
All across the world we can feel things settling
Into silence
A quiet interrupted only by the humming
Of internal combustion engines
Soon there will be dead earth
Beneath my feet; dead sky above
Riverside, 2008
In gathering darkness I sit, and wait for the night
Sip on a joint as the sunlight fails
The bench and the trees lit by the streetlight
I watch the park and the sky as it pales
Then turns darker, with the sun behind the earth
Night arrives and the street quiets down
Traffic clears out, the night gives birth
To silence, and stillness is its crown
I finish the joint and my body shivers
In the late fall night, less from cold than from premonition:
Something lives in the night beyond the park and the river's
Slow approach to its manumission
In the open ocean. Something waits for me in the gloom
I cough, spit on the ground, return to my room
