Unpacking a Globe — National Poetry Month

Unpacking a Globe

I gaze at the Pacific and don’t expect
to ever see the heads on Easter Island,

 

though I guess at sunlight rippling
the yellow grasses sloping to shore;

 

yesterday a doe ate grass in the orchard:
it lifted its ears and stopped eating

 

when it sensed us watching from
a glass hallway—in his sleep, a veteran

 

sweats, defusing a land mine.
On the globe, I mark the Battle of

 

the Coral Sea—no one frets at that now. A poem can never be too dark,

 

I nod and, staring at the Kenai, hear
ice breaking up along an inlet;

 

yesterday a coyote trotted across
my headlights and turned his head

 

but didn’t break stride; that’s how
I want to live on this planet:

 

alive to a rabbit at a glass door—
and flower where there is no flower.

by Arthur Sze

via poets.org