—after Martha Serpas

When G-d forces down the prophet’s throat 
not metaphorical knowledge, but
a literal scroll, the prophet
brags about it.

I believe in attention
as a natural resource.
You are what you eat. 
Yet cities emerge from rivers

and then rivers become
afterthoughts. A slug
glides along its mucus, over
a knife. Our superfund site

started as two lowly
increasing pits in the sixties,
in the San Jacinto River; dioxins
from a paper mill released

by flooding and erosion—
precision pretends
to a prophylactic: knowing
what and how long and why

should protect us, the pace
of cleanup sped, the blame
swallowed up—the northern pit
mostly, still, untouched

by remediation.
There’s a hole deep down
where exhaustion seems
entangled with indifference,

as if buried with it.
The highway above
dizzied by its own distance.
The company at fault

manages a response
and I fear their repair
as further incision.
After one spill in the Gulf,

responsible parties
used dispersants to break up
oil on the surface
of the sea, so when news

helicopters flew overhead
the waters were only choppy,
oil sank to lower depths,
as if separated from itself. 

I imagine the prophet’s vomit
as ambergris. The Gulf eats away
at the beach, but everything
comes out again. Our city

compartmentalizes nature,
highlights what’s left.
Outdoor theater
on a fabricated hill,

biggest in the city.
Kids lay in the grass.
I’ve seen opera
for children, watched

an astronaut guitarist
shout out a satellite, looked
from that modest height 
across our vast Medical Center,

like a new downtown
in all its gravity
and growth. Separate
the spiritual from intellectual,

physical from what you can’t
control? Horror becomes
mere cliche. I want to emerge
from my own numbness

without poisoning
everyone around me.
I have said not in my name,
like that’s enough. 

Today I took my son
to summer camp
at our botanic garden—
recovered from a golf course—

and sat for a minute
in the greenery before work,
the same when I picked him up,
all the while, on the side

of our duplex, a caterpillar
attended to its business
with the humility
of an insect. Unlocking

the front door, I heard
my wife and son whisper;
crouching, they pointed
at what he called milkweed.

I had to get small
to see the chrysalis, almost
missed its metamorphosis. 
Keep open my eyes

and throat, as if sifting
what I can do
from what I endure.
Tell the truth. Spit it out.