ENFANTS DU FUTUR

“Why don’t you think of him as the one who is coming, who has been approaching for all eternity, the one who will someday arrive, the ultimate fruit of a tree whose leaves we are?” 

-Rainer Maria Rilke, on God

again the hummingbird’s hellbent beak

is in the foxglove, the crow’s is in the mulch,

the mud. it’s mid march and everything

is returning, but nothing is new. once again

my boot soles are worn to their foam bones

and the cafe is playing Harvest Moon. over

an old man’s shoulder I catch the headlines,

words like caucus, countertarifs, unchained. 

the crows are squawking out either an elegy

for winter or a warning ballad for the glum

apocalypse. do the children know they were 

born right on time for it, unlucky inheritants 

of a hurt world? one of them reaches for his 

sister’s hand but it’s full of jump rope, so he 

settles for an elbow, dear corner of affection. 

another chases a remote control car down 

the sidewalk, the back of his shirt says 

ENFANTS DU FUTUR. it seems to them 

it is only spring. and every time the old women 

lug food home in buggies for their beloved 

cats, every time lovers kiss at the crosswalk 

waiting for the light to change, every time 

the struck fawn is scraped off the highway 

and buried with ceremony, every time we 

rehearse devotion, play house with time-worn 

mercy, doesn’t it make god stir in his chrysalis? 

doesn’t the silk thin, doesn’t the vine sag?