Michael Carson

I have to take what the machine tells me on faith,
that this is in fact a large city in South Dakota
and that they have restaurants there I recognize,
and the people believe more or less what I do
having been born at more or less at the same time,
but the children of Sioux Falls know better,
and in their fantastical games of make believe
that requires no machine, only the vastness
and whimsy of minds still delighted by their
own self invention, pretend I am here,
in the backyard of the Maryland house where
old friends live who have never left, with their family
of three tumbling children and one limping dog,
and on the other side of this fence is a Jewish
retirement home, where, my old friends tell me,
the old men occasionally stand under these leaning
trees that seem but shadows of trees, to scream,
and though none of us, not my friends, and
not me, and likely not those men who now sleep
unsoundly under their too heavy comforters,
have been to Sioux Falls, and can only look it up
in the machine, and ask what the machine knows,
we still believe in their children, do not take their
existence on faith but see them, under that vast sky,
debating the next step, what to make of our lives.

Love, Carlos, love, these trees
lie, these trees will save your life.
Hold them fast, don’t walk away.
Do not die, like that.

I’ve seen cities destroyed,
children gathered like fallen stalks
to pray, their mosques broken,
soldered, glass again.

Birds, Carlos, birds, taking
off from the edge of branches,
teetering as if to plunge
only to rise higher, live forever.

My own eyes, it’s true,
men crushed by antique silence,
rocking in cigarette’s smoke,
rifles on their laps, heaven.

Love, Carlos, love.
Do not lie about being saved.
Do not give yourself over to
these burning cars, climb higher.