New Poem in Crisis Mode

We’re Wolves

We have been howling in the wilderness for ages, to the moon,

To the empty sky if necessary, but

Never silent—or we would be lost, our longings strewn

Across the universe, our species shut

Forever out of what lies so far ahead

We cannot imagine it. Sometimes two

Of us huddled together, our eyes bright red,

At other times a numerous pack outspread

Our voices criss-crossed in the icy blue

Of the secret winter, the sound of ice

Scraping on the stars, and echoes like names

We dare not speak but feel, the painful price

Of eternity. You ask for nothing

When you ask for silence, and our loathing,

As though our howls were prayers, better wordless,

And all our harmonies unwound and breathless.

New Poem for mid-May

New Astro-Photos of Black Holes

I know they are too far away to affect our lives

And besides they have been there for billions of years

And will be for many more: whatever thrives

In the universe will continue. Despite our tears,

Whatever is doomed to die soon disappears.

Some jets of steam shoot out, swoosh swoosh,

Every few moments, while planets and moons.

Swirl down the gurgler, as do time and space,

No more moral than gangsters and goons,

No more virtuous than your angelic face,

My love, standing here with me one last night

As though we had a million evenings left

To love as all the other couples do, in spite

Of lost melodies and fractured dreams, bereft

And lost in solitude amid the nebulae

Where nothing grows or dies or dreams. The sky

Is empty now and silent.  And so you walk away.

The galaxy is empty and silent and so am I.