George Moore
Country Without Borders
the darker blue of the very deep
in liquid states of being
living things living in the sea
borderless in constant currents
without waiting for officials
waiting for word from above
lost in space
in a glass building
a stain on paper
penetrates the walls
no foreign names
in such heavy space
A border then is not a sea
reflection on an unclean glass
a surface you cannot cross
a country becomes a wave
sail meeting with sails
hand-held to a line
an open regatta
In a Time of Crisis
This is our catastrophe now
familiar as a glass of milk
a door off its hinges
a window blown open
continents breaking up
into little islands
each the map of a hand
playing dead as others die
the serpent in our blood
eyes bright with imaginary fire
cautions against wishes
wishes against caution
in the television landmines
on the computer deafness
the world turns in directions
unforeseen unfavorable
until we break free
close the gap between
islands adrift
enemies in our sleep
and our common survival
familiar as a glass of milk
At Seventy
for D. Dewhurst
Night ink-edged blue over the gessoed canvas of Utah
and at seventy I raced straight into the storm
snow-blind and swirls of desert ghosts
haunting the empty highway desert blackhole
The last gas station outside Vernal
its yellowish light on washed out asphalt
waves farewell traveler have a safe trip
high dive the edge and suddenly emptiness
Then on the hospital steps the Great Salt Lake
you enjoy a cigarette the oxygen tank shut off
staff swirling by like snow trying to drift
into something a wall a storm another stretch of desert
opens into nothing keeps opening drive all night
something pushes me faster and backward all at once
a beer in your hand ten years before
waiting for someone to say we’re here
nothing changes and at seventy the night drive
is nearly all I remember
those headlights cutting the darkness
a last cigarette and flying to the moon
distance gives way to the light
Getting Away
Living among rocks and weeds
to guard against wisdom.
A serious young man in high school
the thought crossed my mind of raising sheep
for eternity for that was the nature of the game
at seventeen and all else was hogwash or poppycock
my mother’s terms for the limitless
But the dream survived somewhere in the Highlands
in one of those cinematic landscapes of fog and stone
the simpler life a friend and I agreed
was the better beyond the edges of a growing city
where all were destined to think to be
between sunrises and sunsets
watched over by an ancient tribe of sheep
an unfinished dream never cluttered with wreckage
Yet now I see things that were then invisible
the bourgeois simplicity of being without need
the countryless when their country is carved up by war
the boats on a broken and angry sea
that would settle for a settlement on an icy shore
I see between the lines of my own poetry
the other lines that bleed
and get away with it because I will not sleep
and the sheep have gone astray