We never cried over spilt milk, spilt pot, spilt seed,
Back then, before the tarring of the feathery tribes
(So to speak), the greasing of palms, the rigging of the bay ...
One night someone changed the sign to read:
"$50 FINE FOR LETTERING."
Back before that, we were still learning
How to treat in tum the nasty sewage badly,
And the city's sordes of insults rolled off the coast
Like water off a great merganser's back ...
One morning it was thick crude.
So here's one last, one long, one wasted breath,
Axed out of that beat, beat, beat past
To weave into a basted, blasted wreath
To float out over those blessed but bested wraiths,
Oiled,
even
polluted, yeah,
but
far-out, man, way-out
at last.
Kay Ryan
Doubt
A chick has just so much time
to chip its way out, just so much
egg energy to apply to the weakest spot
or whatever spot it started at.
It
can't afford doubt. Who can?
Doubt uses albumen
at twice the rate of work.
One backward look by any of us
can cost what it cost Orpheus.
Neither may you answer
the stranger's knock;
you know it is the Person from Porlock
who eats dreams for dinner,
his napkin stained the most delicate colors.
