“Earth's Holocaust”

It’s time again. 
Tear up the violets
and plant something more difficult to grow.
Everything a little cleaner, a little more ugly:
cast cement tubs of malevolent ageratums,
and: “Your grandmother baked
and froze that pie. We saved it
for a special occasion.” Codicils
don’t add up to much when there’s nothing to leave:
a bedroom, stretching from Portland
to Richmond stunningly furnished in
French motel provincial. On the brighter side
plastic seaweed has proved
an unqualified success. As have ready-glued scrapbooks
which if out of style
still epitomize. In this one
is your first matchbook cover,
an advertisement with a misprint,
a pair of bronze baby shoes,
a tinted enlargement of a tintype.
Twins on the upswing: there are more people.
A regular Shriners’ parade of funerals.
But there are not less people.
There are more people
of all sorts, conditions and flavors.
Getting to shake each
by the hand takes time.
Not more though
than abstracting the grain of dust
from each raindrop. Starfish
have no sense of time, at all.