Big Skull (2002)

There’s a big skull
in our back yard
satirizing the half
we vaunt as day.

I hear it droning
low old chants
& alms, sad &
deep within its

chapel bone, cold
as time and all
that drained away
while we built and

taught and moved
and won. Our way
is powerful and
ripe, it’s true—a red

engine of high
rhythms, fleet
furious and blind.
It arcs a future

which has no need
of you and me;
it has cured itself
of the ache to love.

La la la, sings the skull
out back, not exactly
mocking, nor ironic,
but deeply disturbing

as all engraved
jesters are. He’s
exactly what we
cannot stand to hear:

correction from
down under,
God’s thunder
bringing up the rear