Friday, September 26, 2025

The Ark

There are two of every kind,
though the battle lines are a bit blurred these days.
Who measured these awful cubits of would?
The boat is tilted, crowded and heaving
as if it had no axis, no sun to worship
on days when Proteus sweeps the oceans
into a shroud because Frost could make no peace
between fire and the weeping polar ice.
The incense from the forge and factory
does not appease the carpenter or his boss,
who thought the trip on a heavenly whirligig
might last a hundred billion apocalyptic spins
after Adam knocked up fruit-filled Eve.
We drift through space, a milkweed spore
on an ark, nothing less and nothing more.
The wheel and a spark of electric flint
have become the nuclear flu, a covid strain
with binary digits running God’s motherboard.
Let there be bread for the wandering wastrel horde
riding the nonstop snow-piercing equatorial train.
Let there be a dove with an olive branch,
a night when only dolphins and crickets sing.
Let there be a hundred million miracles
on this troubled, ancient, spinning thing.

~William Hammett


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