--from a poem by Kenneth Koch
Easy to mistake water hemlock for wild carrot
and easy to miss democracy becoming orthodoxy.
How say? One train may hide another.
–Kenyan railway crossing warning.
Also, the prime directive from Star Trek:
not to reveal ourselves to species as yet
unaware of life from other planets.
Repeal U.N. vetoes. Roots like anise,
two or three summers ago, it was sweet
cicely I saw growing on an island
in the pond. Are we an isolated population
with nowhere to retreat from icy glaciers
or the heat of the day? Will the hydrogen economy
make the distances of space traversable?
Name the parts, and parts of parts, of plants.
That way, when walking from the ocean, up
the mossy river bottom, through the temperate
mountains, to find a sitting spot below the glacier
something occupies the mind. What constitutes
consent of the governed? Unmanned expeditions
are man's decision, the Saturn and Mars missions.
Kenneth Koch was my teacher.
He didn't notice me; I didn't respect him.
One train may hide another, wisely
he said. We observe and record our observations.
What cannot be seen or measured
cannot be revered. All know as well as
their names, one plant or planet or government
may hide another.
Copyright 2007 by Robert Ronnow.