Future's Place
Her eyes asked me why, citing their history, the history of maximus.
My fingertips tenderly explained with their stroking.
Nothing is exempt from extinction.
Her trunk curled and exhaled before wrapping a brush.
She has painted so many flowers, on so many canvases.
This will be her final still-life for her life’s still finale.
No, nothing lives forever. Species-wide genocide or no,
we sapiens will eventually fossilize in our contorted positions,
and end nature’s tango with consciousness.
She dipped her brush in brown and frowned, ill-consoled.
I don’t know what it’s like to be the last one like me.
I am no witness to the great dying of my genus as I near death myself.
She’s painting a reminder: if it were up to her, she’d still have a home.
But it’s never up to the ones becoming extinct. They never ask for it.
And since we are part of nature, is her dying so unnatural?
Selfishness forgets she is all of Elephas, and there is loneliness about her.
Her family is spiritual, and spirituality being communal,
she has nothing left to offer but a vast detachment of spirit.
She uncoils her trunk from her paintbrush as her eyes well up.
She saunters off to add the finishing touches to her graveyard,
and now I see: she doesn’t mind extinction; she hates finishing last.
Still Time
What time of day does time stay still?
No time exists when suns are new.
At work the seconds slow at will
While I am bored with work to do.
And evening time’s no time for rest:
The dishes done, the kids need baths.
And once in bed they try their best
To stay awake, but it never lasts.
And we’re too tired for time to talk—
I write, you knit, the raccoons roam.
The hands meander around the clock;
We read in bed, together, alone.
The lights go out; I watch your dreams.
And that’s when time has stopped, it seems.
Joshua Gray lives just outside Washington DC with his wife and two boys, where he is a guest blogger for 32poems.com and writes about the local poetry scene as examiner.com's DC Poetry Examiner. He has created his own poetry form called the sympoe, which is described on his Website www.joshuagraynow.com, also the home of his blog Poembuster, where he busts poems that inspire him. |
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