☀ Today's Poem: "Inside the Compulsion to Wonder Lurks the Will to Survive" Dobby Gibson

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February 29, 2020

Inside the Compulsion to Wonder Lurks the Will to Survive

Dobby Gibson

Once awake, I tend to like it.
A puddle can recognize me. Then I look up
and I'm as anonymous as the sky.
And yet, in my hands, this terrible orb glows.
The ships, it reports, can now sail
straight through the Arctic, filthy bears
dinging to shriveling rafts of ice.
Tell me the truth, what does anyone care
inside the barber shop this morning
where everyone wants the regular again,
combs swimming in little blue aquariums.
What if this isn't late capitalism, but early?
One idea is to set the clocks ahead
one hour so we're closer to knowing
how it turns out. Another is the Roman ides,
or the 72 ko of Japan. Mist starts to linger.
Great rains sometimes fall.
The Buddhists have a word for it,
but the moment it's defined,
the thing itself vanishes.
The more we ask of this world
rises up through us, like an evaporation.
When I asked you what day it was,
you said the day after yesterday.
No matter where we move the glass vase,
it leaves a ring.

from the book LITTLE GLASS PLANET /Graywolf Press

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