Darwin’s Urn – sacrificezone

Trapped inside the daily noise of man’s machinery an atonal fugue without music of the spheres
cyclical and blesséd, even when all machines are on off an irritating drone pervades this room without
apology, this power grid. Human beings plug into it with their paycheck prongs. Vacuum pump fluctuates,
fans oscillate, chase proceeds along X and Y axes on worm bores of forged steel. My heart, suspires. . .
down around the corroded canyon of an old cast-iron drainage pipe surrounded by spilled photochemicals
and rusting razor blades, who will believe it, a cricket sings. Aerosol spray can of ant and termite killer
sadly within reach, I hurl it into the trash, smile calmly at the prescience of our possible common doom.
The bug’s little choir lifts me throughout the twelve hour shift in between volume spikes that drown out its
tune when the wee peripatetic heartbeat resumes. Yet such miniature beauty making, I fear, will merely
draw enough attention to be crushed or poisoned. Could cricket be enjoying its peculiar new digs? I flinch
to wonder how we can escape, together, with Sartre and Disney breathing down my neck. Just the few steps
through a door and onto sweet simple grasses outside…
right effort
cricket knows
does not stop its song
for long

thanks to donna fleischer for sharing her poem with us

and donna fleischer appreciates bottle rockets press for bringing this poem out in a selection of haibun by Donna Fleischer, entitled indra’s net, 2003 – df