2 POEMS

Gary McDowell

EVOLUTION

A thousand years, also
          the melting
odd enough.
          Embrace near
to the end of what
          follows—as  itself

and so to speak,
          nothing in the organs
has taken place:
          super-sensory for the
first time. Friars
          of movement—

for example, heroes
          of delivering what
we later, we,
          Genesis as a figure of
Tuesday afternoons
          beginning this Tuesday

afternoon. Come until
          there are no more
who think that what.

__

FLORIDA, THEN

On the beach
          buoys in their old age,
water-soaked,
          tend to disappear—
sometimes seem,
          or decades we were

just a few years ago.
          Others have struggled
catching and tearing.
          I'm looking at rocks—
geography that underlies.
          Get hung up and turn

and out of and around
          mapped history,
so hard there. There.
          Ours was crowded.
Another as the law
          when early the flats

from photographs,
          celebrating the tide's
racing in pilings.
          Only the uppermost.
They lie under the water
          out under the surf,

more inches across,
          inches above the sand          
ingrained with sand,
          the fish trap—
one of hundreds—
          is empty.

__

The fractured nature of these two poems—as well as a lot of the other poems I wrote last year (2016)—happened rather naturally. Whether in response to the poisonous rhetoric of the political campaign(s) or not, I certainly, like so many writers and non-writers alike, couldn't stay away from the absurdity of our President-Elect's hate speech and so felt ill at ease writing plainly and clearly about much of anything because everything became tainted by my rage and contempt for the orange-headed monster. So in retrospect, I think a lot of the syntax here comes from an attempt to steer clear of any easy answers. Also, as always, Jorie Graham. Zach Savich's The Orchard Green and Every Color. And the notebooks of Elias Canetti.