from a collage by Marsha Connell
From a turbulent sea filled with icebergs,
where immigrants waited to enter the promised land,
blind and crowned with thorns, Liberty rises.
Or is she drowning, sinking beneath the waves?
In a crepuscular haze where nothing is clearly
defined,
not even the edges of the sky, industrial scrubbers
breathe warm clouds into the frigid air.
Towels and aprons, domestic prayer flags;
a grandmother hangs out clothes to dry, touches the
mezuzah.
In a locked cabinet, whiskered koi frozen on a ginger
jar—
The memory of ancient fish, venerable as the sun.
The small child wants to touch them and wonders
if they still dream of being fish—or have they
forgotten how.
Where are all the grandmothers?
How to explain to the children free carbon
cannot escape through the holes in the ozone layer.
A slow polar Armageddon ripens under greenhouse
skies.
The seas will rise, the cities will flood.
No time to worry about the trees.
Though everything is cyclical, we can't see into
the next one.
Both enemies shrouded under the same veil of history—
Liberty ages, ice melts into the sea.
Her eyes seem to say this too shall pass.
Prayer flags continue to do a brisk trade with the
wind.
Summer 1991
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