has a metallic taste and smells
like sulfurous downriver air.  
It doesn’t bode well,  
but we hope it won’t kill us  
during a week soaking up a sky,  
indestructible spruce, creeping sand,  
and the relentless prevailing breeze
in Michigan’s little finger.
We brew coffee or fill a glass  
if we have to. Term done,  
I’m dodging work and news.
Nights, I spray myself with deet  
and drift outside to hear  
the music of the spheres. No.  
I watch distant titanic explosions
and exhale my longing, my hopes.  
Hope’s like cold water
after a day on a roof: hope  
no one gets shot going home  
from school today, hope schools  
stay open. I gape at constellations,
stars lightyears apart, dots  
connected by tales and habit.  
Do bombing runs suggest  
some luminous order to those  
who fly away? On earth,  
human beings are turned  
to dust or driven into flight.  
Returning to a dark cabin, I mind
my algorithms and cursor past  
blood and craters. We’ll choke  
on what passes for hope.