Mark Blaeuer


Decorum

Eight tiny
black beetles,
yellow-spotted
in sunlit
pollen atop
blue-bearded
iris petals,
a display
so intimate
I need
to avert
all perception,
wondrous though
life is.



Theology

Caged, it preens feathers,
wingspan larger than
created realm,
each human a steel bar
rendering instinct useless.

The ancient retains neither
signet of self
nor any urge to feel
equations wriggling in its beak,
as happened eons ago.

Improbably,
it hides among numbers now.



An Afterworld Northwest of Hudson Bay

         	 — text found in Asen Balikci, “Netsilik” (page 426),
	             Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 5

The energetic
hunters and tattooed women
live in eternal
bliss
in villages located high
in the sky
or very deep
under the tundra.

The lazy hunters remain just
below the crust
of the earth;
they are perpetually hungry
and apathetic, and
their only food
is
the butterfly.

Mark Blaeuer lives in the Ouachita Mountains. His poems and translations have appeared in ninety-plus journals, including Bluepepper, Centrifugal Eye, Found Poetry Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and SurVision. One collection is available: Fragments of a Nocturne (Kelsay Books, 2014).

 
 

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