Such glorious faith as fills your limpid eyes,
       Dear little friend of mine, I never knew.
All-innocent are you, and yet all-wise.
       (For heaven’s sake, stop worrying that shoe!)
You look about, and all you see is fair;
       This mighty globe was made for you alone.
Of all the thunderous ages, you’re the heir.
       (Get off the pillow with that dirty bone!)

A skeptic world you face with steady gaze;
       High in young pride you hold your noble head;
Gayly you meet the rush of roaring days.
       (Must you eat puppy biscuit on the bed?)
Lancelike your courage, gleaming swift and strong,
       Yours the white rapture of a wingèd soul,
Yours is a spirit like a May-day song.
       (God help you, if you break the goldfish bowl!)

“Whatever is, is good,” your gracious creed.
       You wear your joy of living like a crown.
Love lights your simplest act, your every deed.
       (Drop it, I tell you—put that kitten down!)
You are God’s kindliest gift of all,—a friend.
       Your shining loyalty unflecked by doubt,
You ask but leave to follow to the end.
       (Couldn’t you wait until I took you out?)

I carried it to the edge of the cement walk.
It deserved me, I thought,

for how tirelessly I’d chased,
for the way I cared about its inner light.
A last look through the keyhole

of my cupped palms
and I set it down, then
stomped flat, smearing long with my toe

so the neon green spatter and jagged streak
glowed, brighter than before, as though
a spirit glad to have finally escaped its body.

With a stick, I drew a crooked star.
A diamond. And like a sickly dusk,
its ink faded, slow at first, then all at once.
I went giddy, innocent as a god.
Night’s oncoming chill

collected along my collar. I had no idea yet,
bounding back out
across the sighing, blue lawn for another,
no idea the suffering it would really take
in a dark world to shine.

At Shaw’s Market the lobster tank sits
to the right of the fish counter, just left 
of the freezer with the fish sticks and frozen 
perch. Therein lie the lobsters, stacked like 
so many traps, brackish and silent, their pincers 
rendered useless, wrapped shut tight in yellow 
plastic. Scuttled into these briny and light-dulled 
shallows, they hulk like the wrecks of some 
forgotten sea floor. One evening, uneasy, 
I went home to read what I could: phylum, 
arthropoda – cousins to trilobites, crabs, insects, 
spiders. I studied the neurobiology, learned 
lobsters have hundreds of eyes but do not see, 
not exactly, and I thought of one I judged 
somnolent flinching his taped pincers at my 
reflection looming like an eclipse, my domestic-
ated glimpse into the deep, what terror
he must have felt coupled with an absence 
of sediment that must have felt like, well, 
nothing. Six hundred million years, I thought 
of him there, sedated, stunned by the salt light. 
The next day I returned intending to purchase 
several and set them free; failing, I drove by 
myself to the beach where I stared at the sea. 
Lobsters once ruled all I could see, their armored 
carapaces inviolable, feeding on anything that 
might be. Lords of the Cambrian prehistory, 
they crawled out of time and into the late 
Quaternary, which is to say, us, left to rule 
the world as we must. What thief waits for 
me, I can’t help but think, as I leave the store
with my groceries, feel my way through the lot
looking for my lost sedan, crawling with unease
through the summer dark and soft salt-breeze?

If I were a bear,
   And a big bear too,
I shouldn’t much care
   If it froze or snew;
I shouldn’t much mind
   If it snowed or friz—
I’d be all fur-lined
   With a coat like his!

For I’d have fur boots and a brown fur wrap,
And brown fur knickers and a big fur cap.
I’d have a fur muffle-ruff to cover my jaws,
And brown fur mittens on my big brown paws.
With a big brown furry-down up to my head,
I’d sleep all the winter in a big fur bed.

We get lost in the desert, lost very lost, and although we aren’t going to tell anyone that we can’t possibly be any more than two miles from civilization, the fact remains that we are lost very lost in the desert very desert, and the car very car is having a hard very hard very hard time getting started up again, and so we kick it very kick it in its ass very ass and the car is still having a hard very hard time and we are feeling lost all the more lost very lost in this desert very desert, and there is no one around us no no one very around us at all very all and there are birds very birds of which there are many very many, but the birds very birds don’t know don’t know how to help us and us and us help start the car very car and we are more lost more lost and we need help need very very help need very very help help and there is no no no one around us except if you count count count those ants in the ant hill that is all we have all we have are the ants very ants and then we wire them up yes wire them up yes I said wire wire wire and with the force of all the ants all wired all wired up and then on the count of three we all yell “CHARGE!”

Raymond Luczak performs his ASL poem “Otters,” with voiceover and subtitles in English and ASL Gloss.

^{In English and ASL gloss}

[English]

in a documentary
they dove in
into the burble
of river, braiding
around each other
their combed fur
shining in the sun
their eyes twinkling
watching them
I wished my hearing siblings
had been more like them
always pulling me in
to cavort with them

[ASL gloss]

me watch-watch d-o-c-u-m-e-n-t-a-r-y
{creature-wriggle creature-wriggle}
water {cascade-left-right-down}
{creature-dive-down creature-rise-up
around-each-other
fur-lining-arms-chest} wet
sun {on-me}
chest-shine-shine
eyes-shine-shine
me-wish hearing brother-sister
same-same
{creature-dive-down creature-rise-up}
come-on-come-on
join play-play