Eye of the tropical January sun

Exercising belief about unknowns.

Makes sense to take your best guess.

Using history, numbers, extrapolation.

Getting the trajectory right for re-entry.

Few dissenters left for climate change, evolution.

Nuclear power brings a process to earth

that occurs only in space. Dangerous

but necessary? Not a risk-averse weasel.

One among many mammals is the weasel,

not known for its consideration of unknowns

but, for its extreme caloric needs, considered dangerous.

My wife says in England violent gusts

forced a locomotive off its tracks. One interpretation

might reasonably be that the mother, earth,

has stopped mothering man. We're entering

a period of unknowns and must evolve.

What might this involve

and what adjustments are possibly feasible?

Walking rather than riding to the subway entrance,

using less electricity until more is known,

preserving agricultural soils and forest land,

buying fewer plastic contraptions.

My brother's washing his pajamas less often.

None of this may make the slightest difference

in how the earth and the sun and universe revolve.

But we are human and addicted to action,

the probable less attractive than the possible.

Also, there's no percentage in respecting death

unless it's imminent. Better to remain centered,

focused on food, child-bearing, war and the poem.

All driveways plowed, all lawns mowed.

Just in time before the first snow, I raked our leaves.

Two eight hour days. What percent of all time is that?

Draw a ray with point A the first pile of leaves

extending to the extrapolating end of universe.

.01 of Aaron. Zero of Zach.

Hawks playing, hunting, mating, canaries in the mine.

Having been too many places to count.

Sex bars, infant formulas, fire crews, last rites, permanent jobs, traffic

      tickets, judges' chambers, out houses, wedding banquets, boiling

      teapots, frantic centuries, facial tissues, presumed innocent, clear

      intentions, stainless steel.

Spiderweb glove. Deerfly earring. Daddylonglegs seeingeyedog.

Memorized songs. Privatized loans.

You cannot know what you're doing until you've done it.

Erudite sweep the floor. Articulate make the bed.

Infrared town hall. Crab nebula. Your last crap.

Eye of the tropical January sun. Slouching toward temperate zone.