Josh Hanson
As Houses
The bees’ cells crowding inward, the repeated form,
Repetition of that inscrutable mind, raised
To a hum, mechanical as the flower’s unfolding
And as dedicated to itself: what safety in number?
Some centuries now and we’re laying out the first
Thanksgiving: the corn, planted in rows, is milk-white,
Sweet, and governed by its own simple mania,
The houses pressing in along the autumn streets,
The pressing of mouths, overfed and hungry:
I clamber in, grateful, the sting tight between my legs.
HawkWalking, I build the town to my step.
Houses spring up, new and already aging.
There lies, they say, a low line of mountains
Hemming us in against the bay, but if they exist
They are barren, and cut clear they may waste
Down to the bottoms: Why hope for forgiveness?
I know what the hawk sees: nothing
But the world building ever-outward,
And man does not yet exist, even to doubt:
The unknown is but the last invented question: It too is ours and cannot satisfy.
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