Richard Nester

 

 

Eco-System

 

for Kathryn Kopple

 

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head,

but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.

     --Chinese Proverb

 

One tires of it after a while,

the ever fidgety hatchlings falling

at one’s feet. Your part in guilt—

if you had only sat still long enough,

they might have made it.

You’re an  ecology after all and have duties.

It takes that special bird nest of sorrow

shampoo they sell on the imaginary channel

for thorough cleansing,

and damn that stuff does burn.

 

 

 

Constant Evolution

 

for Ellyn Maybe

 

“Evolution (from the Latin evolution, ‘unrolling’ is a theoretical

   explanation for the mechanism by which species change)”

                        --the Guide

 

On Facebook you get to like your likes.
No wonder my wife loves it there, among
Facebookers virtually licking each other
like a pile of cats, like our two cats—
Shadow and Whistler—merged afternoons
at the end of the bed, just short of cybersex,
but certainly engaged in cyber-grooming,
the sort of bonobo-ing around our genus did
when leaves were plentiful, before the upright
thing and books—fun, practical too with regard
to parasites. I hope that no one thinks me
stand-offish, but I’ve never liked a like.
I’m not reticent, I just haven’t known
where the button was, like the HD on the TV
that my son can’t get me to use. God, I hope
that no one researches this, comes up with data,
or exposes me to the tragedy of unfriending.

I’m not sure I can take it: extinction visible

like the gun on a poker table.

 

 

 

In the Kingdom of Gods

 

            “Style (from Latin stilus, ‘pointed stick’) is a specific way

                of behaving, and of creating or presenting material.”

                                                                                                                --the Guide

 

The first computer bug was a moth

found in the wire relays of a Mark I

in the 1940s. I read this in Time

in a urologist’s office after answering

what seem like endless questions

about plumbing, my plumbing.

 

We have this notion of story—

beginning, middle, end—

that says that ending and concluding—

that is arriving at knowledge

by way of argument—are the same.

No amount of detail, however plainly,

clearly told will serve,

without some sort of narrowing.

 

Grace Hopper found it while

developing the first compiler. If she

were here and immodest, as I am

at my age, she might well tell

the doctor about her role in history.

Good for you, he’d say.

 

They’re so lordly, these doctors

and the receptionists so sweetly, blandly

good at sticking stickers on files,

their surfaces so wiped, this might be

heaven after the purgatory of plumbing.

Clouds, pearly gates, the deity 

encountered at last. Good for you,

he says. Now we’re starting to get

somewhere, the knife of narrowing,

of surgery as spiritual event—

necessary damage.

 

Richard Nester has published in numerous literary magazines.  He is the author of the poetry collection Buffalo Laughter (Kelsay Books, 2014).