The forest rings so wide, it is the world. The sky, ocean,
hand
In hand rising to tides, particulate excreta. The river mouth
The moon lights in blindness through the forest, hot,
tumbling silver by houses
Like mushrooms crowded. Ladder by ladder, neighbors
pass ore in ladles
While this planet hushes into a cinder. The moon unlocks
its continents of water
So the outline of a sail appears as its cobalt face—the forest
A ring tight as the throat sings wider: who arrives
Who arrives who arrives. In the office I ask
If the cup my coworker is holding is real. It doesn’t look
real. It looks like math’s
Translated bed. Beside their chainsaws, loggers smoking—
brain-
Dead, lung-dead, I am the operator of something—the
mouth with green rot touching
The metal slurry of the ocean.
The singer sings the last verse. The last
Song we hear, stepping outside the heat
Into the dark pine, the moon dissolving like lead.
In the office I ask, How could the news come?
In our terror echoing as profit.
Copyright © 2016 Joe Hall. Used with permission of the author.