Don't worry about this huge stack you see in my hands.
I'm only reading a very few.
Yeah, I can see you looking alarmed.
Will I ever have dinner?
You will.
So manifest is an interesting word in that, of course,
it means made visible.
But it also means the list of cargo in a ship,
and that's what it will come to in this poem.
"Manifest."
"Hawks, rivers, cities, ochre, us, a species whose right hand
sketches its left hand but can't draw itself.
Whales.
Geosynchronous satellites.
A truck hauling folded tarps under a tarp.
Wars, hunger, jail cells, praises, pratfalls, puns, gold
circuits on phone card connectors--
all cargo, manifest, circling the sun together each 365 days
plus a few remnant hours.
A story here ribboned with lightning.
They're dimmed by clouds on a nitrogen, oxygen,
carbon dioxide, and dust-cushioned bundle,
whose glaciers depart, insects quiet, seas rise.
To that which is coming, I say, here, take what is yours.
But forget, if you can, what is coming,
find not worth pocketing, let fall unnoticed as weed
seed, one small handful of moments and gestures.
Moments mouse-colored, minor gestures disturbing no one,
slipped between the ones that were counted, the ones
in which everything happened.
A petroglyph's single fingerprint.
A spider awake in an undusted corner.
Let stay, if you can, what is coming,
one or two musical notes, hummed in a half hour that
couldn't be herded or mined, made
to save daylight or spend it.
Leave one unfraudulent hope, one affection
like curtains blown open in wind whose minutes, seconds,
fragrance, choices won't sadden the heart to recall."