Man's Mood

Generally cheerful institutions

school and hospital, The Constitution, 

roadways with their yellow stitch lines.

Order on the mountainside, in the city, 

the veneer is thin, the people thrifty, 

the freedom to associate unlimited.

Smoke the cigarette, sound the subwoofer, 

I woof and bay like every other dog, proof

one cannot escape the planet, life's foolproof.

Magic's secret- rabbit, lion- the inner

animus emerges from the hat. One eats magicians, 

the other's skewered for dinner.

Thus, happy and sad at once, death a solace

and a fearsome fright. As the dashed lines pass, 

confidently, and when necessary, I drive fast.

An afternoon, one hundred years of solitude

for our silver maple. Microscopic magnitudes: 

the snake's skin, the fly's wing, the man's mood.