Please don’t tell me about the news.
Tell me something I might not have noticed:
the fruit flies bursting out of the compost container
in fireworks formation: celebration
of some small fruit fly victory. Tell me
fireflies aren’t going extinct.
Tell me the world wasn’t better
in the time of the dinosaurs.
Tell me, in a past life,
you were a brontosaurus: plant-eating, humble,
accepting what eluded your brain’s small size;
and I, a dodo, flightless
because I had no need to flee.
If so, my descendants are pigeons.
This makes sense. I come from New York,
the land of the pigeons. And my heart
comes from a place of doves, those released
by monks at the site where the bomb fell
on the explosion’s anniversary. Look up quickly.
They’re flying fast over the edge
of the reflecting pond, going somewhere
no longer visible, leaving us
a string of lanterns, floating.