Darkened Solar Implication
Lunar signals on Earth
being a sign of splotched deficits
deficits that are ashen
prone to protracted psychological cholera
so as seas rise
blindness builds as vertiginous nostrums
as blizzards by analysis
being corpse by rising corpse
mathematics according to protracted weather
yet rise of the seas as monumental assault never addressed in terms of tonnage of gallons
in terms of inundated harbors
of flooded spill ports
or any other grasp of the land
this disfigured moon as sign
as splotched aerial configuration
as living nightmare chalice
as if all composed water had lost its tension
perfectly predicted by living indigenous hand count
I am thinking of the hand as fractionation so to ascend beyond drawn estimate creating in its wake
darkened solar implication
being invisible refugee in Arnhem Land being alive beyond counted scale as timber beyond
corresponding human desolation
Copyright © 2022 by Will Alexander. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 28, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem signals our collective unimaginable predicament. Being in a universe blinded in the main by the transactional propaganda of the capital markets, cosmically proximate to an uninhabitable sun system, a bit over four light years distant. The universe remains a prescient phantom, despite all known technology or belief, as the seas rise, as the sun continues to blaze.”
—Will Alexander