THE IRREDUCIBLE

THE IRREDUCIBLE  

A downy woodpecker gleans breakfast from the dead cherry, chirping between taps. A mackerel sky. The smell of thawed earth.---Dave Bonta, The Moring Porch, 02-27-12

Axiom of axioms: life is a circle.

Not that anything's wrong with it. 

The cherry tree falls in a winter storm,

by thaw, wee wrigglers wriggle out 

of their crannies and bask culinary

charm to tap-tapping peckers busy 

now before all these victual hide

in foliage that live forever. Till fall. 

In the darkness of the porch man's

soul, he rues how extremely cruel 

it must seem to consume breast milk

whose absence lets her thyroid grow. 

It is the canon of the Master: Deny

yourself.  One exists, but for the other 

(who will soon want your coal, oil, tar,

for ducats, and soon all your water.) 

Quid pro quo? No. No quid, no quo.

Undo all that: Who wins a war gets all. 

The winner takes all. Under a mackerel

sky, some fire has burned a loser hoarder. 

In a thawed earth, the winter takes it all.

Axiom: someone's got to die for us all. 

--- Albert B. Casuga

03-01-12