fresh fruit ice cream
scoop after scoop
of vanilla ice cream
plus my chosen raspberries
smooshed together
to a luscious pink rope
of cold sweet fatty bliss
dropped on top
of a crunchy waffle cone
all because Cedar
passed fourth grade math
250 years ago
250 years ago
James Douglas 14th Earl of Morton
begs for mercy, restraint, peaceful contact:
Exercise the utmost patience [and] respect for the Natives…shedding the blood of these people is a crime of the highest nature…every effort should be made to avoid violence; if it becomes inevitable then [they] should be treated with distinguished humanity, [so] the Crew still considers them as Lords of the Country
this is a scientific endeavor
tracking Venus’s transit across the sun
establishing our exact place
in the scheme of things
it’s a boat full of scientists
and the Royal Society of London
guards against making men murderers
reminds them to be civil
and
almost immediately, they kill
Te Maro lies splayed on the sand –
these studious men prove
no better than conquistadors
and it all adds up to the same story again:
arrival means death
5.4 64km 11:45pm
5.4 64km 11:45pm
first the moth flinging himself at the pane
becomes a stiff wind
then the gust gathers
becomes a truck going by on the road behind
but then the rattle’s in front, too –
have truck and wind teamed up?
no, it keeps growing all around at once
quite unlike any truck
then you realize what it is
when everything moves at once:
earthquake
dormitory room
dormitory room
in the sleeping room
bodies stay busy
minds turned out to shake
gallop eat daisies and peer at sky
make whatever worlds they will
bodies stay home
limbs heavy
but blood pulsing, lungs pumping,
mouths restless, straining to speak
air squeezing in and out of all
the little face holes
the dark unknowing hours mumble by
one exhalation at a time
