Would’ve Been Could’ve Been
But only one was
an astute enough navigator
through the precarious tunnels,
and strong enough to break
through the egg’s rigid shell.
A monikered tadpole.
An industrious radical.
A traveler transformed
into a cellular stronghold.
She blasted off to blastocyst
nine months passed.
She’s near to seeing it all-
including the ill harmonies
coagulated by politicians
and pharmaceutical companies.
She’ll see black men shot
in the street by white police,
and hijabs dangerously discrete.
But first I’ll hold her
like mountains do moonlight,
and kiss her gently
like moonlight does mountains.
Walk with her and tell stories
of how mother nature grew up,
and about the transformation
of squiggling tadpoles
into slimy frogs.
Disc Golf
Like clogged gutters I spill
jokes and throw another disc
toward the chainmail basket.
If I were a misanthrope
I’d believe such activities as pointless
as mashing an elevator button with hopes
of increasing the mechanic’s speed.
Clanking – I secure par.
Skiz asks about my pending baby nerves
as Ian curves his disc to a miss,
it popped off a root into the brush.
It’s like this game, I explained,
I’ll take a hopeful shot and know
I could end up lost and farther
from where I was, or fly straight
winning par. We crack a beer and cheers
before wandering into brush,
searching for the lost disc.
A Swarm Imagined, Realized
In the middle of the forest
all you see is more forest.
I imagine a gravid swarm
of the same aptitude, flying,
where all that’s seen is wings
and bodies twisting like tornados
within one another,
and foggy motion revealing the underneath
as a fan does the ceiling.
I painted it with grasshoppers –
using motion like Balla’s bowlegged dachshund
in a psychedelic pallet.
If all things exist,
I dread meeting my swarm.
I’ll paddle through with boards of thorn
until I emerge from the ponderous wood.
–Maxwell Redder