The Skin of Meaning. Keith Flynn

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      and arrange our chips in a manner that will affect

      the outcome of the football game. We accept

      the superstition’s fetish and believe by eating

      the organic apple, and stacking the plastic bottles,

      we will hold back the erosion of the glaciers.

      We tell ourselves we’re doing our part and keep

      our fair practice good coffee karma intact.

      The Starbucks logo features a double-tailed

      mermaid that is swimming in neither direction.

      The enlightened consumer is in pursuit of happiness,

      hedonism disguised as spiritual freedom, paradise

      purchased one cup of coffee at a time, like a bird

      repeatedly attacking its reflection on the window.

      Not the thing itself, but the representation.

      Coca-Cola was a tonic, but Coke is iconic,

      a brand inseparable from our cultural experience,

      like a print taken from a finger, lingering less.

      Let’s forget, for a second, the syrupy effervescence,

      or the grand imitations, Pepsi, Pepper, Pibb.

      Just as we do not practice the pronouncement

      of our neighbor’s names; we know them by their Prius.

      Our language is alive and cannot designate reality,

      but becomes a beacon, or signal, of our relation,

      ghost isotopes that build a memory from the alphabet

      and provide a trail for the sale, like the mystery

      of Coke, the more you drink, the more you want.

      Some stars catching our worried gaze have

      already ceased to exist, so far away only their light

      is left, disappearing in the cold static space.

      Those quiet mornings alone, or in fading twilight,

      when the mind wanders backward on its tracks,

      cirrus clouds thinning on the scarred horizon,

      dolphins plowing together in the near surf,

      or insects chirring atop the gently trembling trees,

      each given significance as markers for a life.

      A bone-encased pocketknife, peacock earrings,

      an uncle’s dragon scarf folded out of Saigon’s

      final chaos, slowly lose their luster, or complicated

      memory, as the generations stand at attention

      in the roll call of deplorable time.

      The clusters of music, whose muscles cannot

      outlast the marathon of styles, are layered

      era upon era, sparkling melodies recycled

      by attentive geologists digging through

      the stacked boxes in the attic or the basement.

      Let the wan night, even when wintered,

      fight the gauze of nostalgia and give refuge

      to every fire, the future freshened,

      and hard run sharpened against

      the only path found, signpost labeled

      what is to come, what is to come, what is to come.

      If it takes the lives of twelve bees to make

      a teaspoon of honey, why is it so absurd to believe

      that our bodies are composed entirely of light?

GREAT BLUE HERON

       for Amanda

      Unable to extricate

      itself from the silver

      flash of trout

      the spirit of the river

      the great blue heron

      its head shaped

      like a rock hammer

      stalks the brooking edge

      on spindly stilts

      and braids his hunger

      into the oncoming

      and infinite curl

      of brisk mountain water

      before the twin flames

      of wings spread

      without warning

      and lifts the whole

      giant jumble of sticks

      and feathers silently

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