In my dream, human seedpods
lie everywhere, split and abandoned.
The hatchlings skitter like ants.

You rouse me from this desolate scene
with a tirade glossy with use.
I’ve neglected so much, including

the children we failed to produce.
The far-off beat of the ocean
rhymes with your cruelest verbs.

I want to explain that abuse
arrives with flutters and colors
that disguise its pearly essence.

You won’t listen, though, your face
propped by an old wooden structure
left by someone more primal than us.

Objects span generations
while we trip over ourselves and die
organic or inorganic deaths

for which we must excuse ourselves.
You won’t excuse me, though,
your standards touching a heaven

you don’t believe exists. The day
slashes across our horizons
as cold fronts clatter and drip.

When we go out for coffee the crimes
that have so often convicted me
will shine in the rain like minnows.

Forgive the minnows for being small.
Forgive the minnows for hatching
from the great universal egg.

And forgive the surf breaking
on the dark shore of your thinking,
where my effigy anchors in sand.