Likestarlings

The age of insecurity

it takes an expense of will
(or an effort of wing)
to reach this point
from where we look down on
milling humanity, a city
quietly pulsing (as if
a living city ever achieves quiet)
taking the path of least
resistance between hillocks
as it spreads to overwhelm

the rising smoke, biblically
miraculous, conventionally claims
the epithet ‘plume’ as if
a feather could ever
be this threatening, yet

we see, in our uniquely
privileged moment, how this
metaphor might also apply
to an escape of oil
in deep sea, ink on a quill
written into the terrifying world
where the innocent eye sees nothing

no pattern in the shape the rocks take
or the inbuilt obsolescence of highrise
blocks that will flex with the mantle
only so far, strain maps of bridges
with colossal catapult potential
should they lose their bearings
in the good earth

blurring the continuities
we take one element for another,
water for breathing, plutonium for fire,
catastrophism as a way of life

in the 17th century some scientists
wanted shot of Aristotle,
the Swift response ridicule
of the scientists (a category
not yet so defined)

Edison was no scientist but an entrepreneur,
the electric chair an advertising gambit;
dams at Niagara might have powered Atlantic City,
current turning one wheel to spin another
as a photovoltaic sun
lights up the Vegas night

& what of Volta now?
his name subsumed, an eddy in the currents
swirled with Ampere & Watt

the pattern’s in the pile,
affairs cunningly woven &
trodden underfoot