mistake

mistake

I believe that it is logically impossible
to have a mistake in nature
 
This thought
the one sanctuary
 
If allowing one
then allowing all…
atoms and interstellar space
mushroom, rat, defecation, disease and detritus
plastic particles in the belly of the whale
sunsets, salty tears, the perfect embrace of a child
concrete slabs, slush sprayed transfer trucks
barrelling angrily 
ant-like legions cleaving the land
box store developments sprawl
consuming marshes where warblers once trilled in the dawn
 
patchy parking lots
the alien view
of displaced humans
mining for meaning and they rise and descend
pressing shoulders in the infinite echo of mirrored elevators
 
And the Walmarts.
And every Walmart-like-thing
towering cathedrals
in homage to a sick and ever excreting god
 
Infill the crooked creek
that once held a boy’s daydreams upon its bank
 
And none of it necessary
the beauty or the ill
but all of it being.
None the less.
Still.

And so
this is where I store my solace
not in some varnished hope
of imminent revolutionary insight
or a sudden coordinated compulsion toward good taste

I would be cynical but a cynic cracks herself
between potential
and a disappointing present
No cynic am I
toss potential out the roaring car window
into the eye of the rushing wind
good-bye.

What is is. What shall be shall be.
The ugly. The plastic. The blindness. The hate.
The beauty. The sunset.
And me.