Two Poems
by William Doreski
There Goes All the Ecology
You look forward to Florida
slopping knee-deep in risen sea.
You want it scraped from the map
so its awkward Freudian shape
no longer stirs crude passions.
The Everglades will disappear
in a mush of incongruous tides.
Alligators will pack their bags
and trudge north to conquer Atlanta,
occupying every swimming pool.
Pure glass condominium towers
of Miami Beach will topple
as the sand beneath them ripples
in an undertow more powerful
than the San Francisco earthquake.
You don’t want anyone to die
in this rumpling of the elements,
but you want a certain arrogance
to lisp and weep and regret
a racist, land-grabbing history.
But clouds of flamingos scouring
for a fresh environment rebuke
your glee, and the costumes
abandoned by Disney employees
will wash up the coast to beach
only a few miles from your house—
a plastic Mickey Mouse head
left forlorn in tattered seaweed.
Florida is doomed regardless
of your desire to see it drown.
But the angle of your disdain
invites the rising sea to spout
through every bit of plumbing,
rousting innocent homeowners
hoping merely to age in place.
Sheltering in Ourselves
The wind is reshaping itself
to avoid fresh expectations.
Snow dishevels the scenery
that had planned a million flowers.
Only April, but already birds
have scouted their brittle estates,
already hundreds of chipmunks
have doggedly scoured the ground.
I’m happy to lie late in bed,
but you want to resurrect antique
flavors, boiling them on ranges
fueled by gas formed underground
before humans evolved. You want
to toss enormous salads
a brontosaurus might admire.
This reiteration of foodstuffs
reacts to a mid-spring snowstorm
as reagents respond to acids.
Such a descant of the spirit
usually occurs near the solstice,
when heat and thunder mingle
to thump out musical metaphors
as we shelter in ourselves.
Today’s already awash in sighs.
The political news shocks us,
the bad actors lost in their roles.
The rise in sea level persists,
eroding properties that once
we coveted for long horizons.
Now we’d rather lose perspective
than see how the vanishing point
has cuddled up to our estate.
You’re brewing potables that reek
of vinegar strong enough to kill
the most persistent microbes.
The morning looks too humble
to sustain our mutual worries,
so let’s step outside in the snow
and wind and lie down and relax
in the season’s last refurbishing.
William Doreski has published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His work has appeared in many print and online journals. He has taught at Emerson College, Goddard College, Boston University, and Keene State College. His most recent books are Water Music and Train to Providence. Learn more at williamdoreski.blogspot.com.
