Poem

I've been in a sentimental mood lately. Still don't know if I want to go back to Alaska or continue the job search here.

Buried Treasure

I chose the sea over a sea of people,
Trees instead of suburbia,
To hang from rather than hang in.
There is peace in the absent
There is war in the present
I’d rather find buried treasure on the beach,
than under the cushions of a couch

So many secrets has the sea,
An everlasting supply of stories, the wind has heard.
Exist combinations of words I wish I’d arranged
Codes for cracking in the rings of ancient trees—
—we’re jealous of the great oak’s life, so we cut it down,
to build a dresser out of its flesh.

Because it’s all right for creatures to go about naked,
but not humans,
a woman wears leopard skin pants while stroking her cat to sleep.

An antelope escapes an African zoo— —into the jungle's jaws
A prisoner out on good behavior begs to remain in jail:
“It’s a jungle out there! A jungle—they’ll eat me alive!” he says.

What’s at the wrong end of the rainbow?
Nothing?
Or worse, a pot of poisonous snakes, perhaps.

An ocean of ideas on what can be done with the ocean to turn a profit…
…and acres of deeds to dole out the land at a price.
In a perfect world shoeboxes would decompose before the dead pets concealed inside
and before the memory of these friends disappears.

December 21st is the shortest day of the year
and so, very slowly we went together into the place where death was
this was the dead man and we’d come for his secret:
if you could be any animal, what would you be?