NOT THIS WORLD
I brought natural predators together in a confederacy
Of love, taught the alligator and hammerhead clemency,
Broke the diet of gray wolves, fed them shoots and berries
From the bowl of my hand. These are not least of the blessings
I had bestowed upon my creatures: I let the sea nettles speak
With me in a music like shuffling paper, while the sparhawk
Slept in the trough of my clavicle; I cobbled the Barbary lion
Together from its ashes. My mind reeled in islands that buoyed life on
Their lonely volcanoes, gathering about me my population;
I said Live a thousand thousand years to the whitebark pine.
I was just coming to molding a new race out of the basalt
When you pointed out how disappointing it is to have built
A universe that doesn't happen, but was never expected.
I am surprised by basic facts: no two things are the same,
When the wind blows against your face, it is proof of an absence,
And the chrysaora quinquecirrha mutely weave through the gloom.
My sparrows! My oceans! My songs! That you have never come
Reminds me, which is less than admitting, why I first made you.
