The News

I heard a cousin of mine had changed her name,
moved to a house on the edge of a small town, left her
TV and computer behind, didn’t even have a phone.
One day I decided to make the drive and drop in.
She grinned her big grin, hugged me,
and put on the kettle for tea.
I asked her what was up with all the changes.
“Well,” she said, “I found out
I’d been suckered. All those laugh-tracks had
sprung the rat-traps in my conscience;
there were rats all over the place.
I thought I was drinking fresh well water but
it was actually runoff from a muddy ditch.
Every day I was setting off firecrackers under my own skin,
but not the kind you can see.
My co-workers said ‘You look great!’
but I learned those were the same lies
they had told my parents and grandparents.
One early morning I woke in the dark
and saw everything for what it was.”
Sipping her aromatic Russian tea I asked,
well, what’s going on now?
“Now?” she said, “Let’s see. Aside from the stones
at Treblinka remaining right where they are,
Laozi is strolling along cliffs composing the Tao Te Ching
while Heraclitus is telling his own drop-ins
All things come to pass in accordance with the Logos.
Galileo is constructing his astronomical telescope just as
Shakespeare’s quill writes on the back of an overfilled page
We are such stuff as dreams are made on. That’s the news,”
she said, starting to marinate
some chicken for dinner.
“History isn’t only what’s going forward, you know;
it flows backwards, too, even sideways—as
you and I just showed. To wake up is
to know what makes that possible.
Don’t forget to put that
in your poem.”

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