Man
       

Day-born, man springs into the demarcated forest,
into the carpeted suburban home, into the wireless ether
where no wilderness endures. The heft of man
moors him, prevents his gravity-defying buildings
from caving in. He coalesces—goodbye old
civility—not a doddering gentleman, not overly courteous
and backed against the fres hly painted wainscoting.
Man claims his post as arbiter of social strata.
He metes out sun-bleached validity. He is not etfete.
He wants a wife to wash his weathered winter jacket,
to watch his wayward wend through hill and vale.
He does not forage. The performance of man
never commenced, is not teleological. See man posed
at vertiginous heights. He does not wobble.
No room for man to buy bric-a-brac statues
of big-headed children kissing or jumping rope.
No room for man to travel from wonder to satisfaction,
from satisfaction to calamity. No room for sly
perturbations of ways of knowing or being.
Inject a dead virus into man's arm. The injection site
puckers in the shape of a galaxy. Here is man, apart.
Here is man, alone in silhouette against a window
too large for its wall. Man made it that way on purpose.
Outside the window, a pigeon builds her nest
in the top of a chimney. Her coos don't resonate
in man's domain. Man's porkpie hat settles just so atop
his short-cropped hair. O golden ratio! O lost poem
of the quintessential sea adventure! O shut man's mouth.

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Copyright © 2015 Rebecca Lehmann All rights reserved
from Pleiades
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission