"The Sandpiper"

       It’s odd
how the sandpiper
is always
on the move.
       When the tide
       brings the food in
       it’s funny
how the sandpiper
works so hard
       for so little.
       The sandpiper
       doesn’t complain
of back pain
or muscle cramps,
doesn’t have
       a lawyer.
       What the sandpiper knows
       that we don’t know
       is how
not to get wet.



"I Begin By Invoking Pablo Neruda Invoking Walt Whitman"
--after Neruda

Because I love my country
I claim you, essential brothers,
old Walt Whitman with your gray hands
and old Pablo Neruda with your owl-like gaze.

So that, with your fierce spirit
word by word, emotion by earthly emotion
we will tear out by the roots
and destroy this bloodthirsty President Bush.

No living being can be happy on earth,
no one can get to any real work on this planet
while that man continues to dismantle entire cultures,
from that shallow place in Washington.

War, for whatever reason, is clearly not the way.
Our enemies are no more a threat to us
than we are to the world and to ourselves.

Asking the old bards to confer with me
I assume the duties of a poet
as I call for a change of regime here at home.

We must believe that ours is the energy that unites;
and we must see just who the real tyrant is--
The unelected official waging war for profit from the White House.