"Somebody Loves Us All" & "They Are Bombing in the Hills"

Somebody Loves Us All

—after Elizabeth Bishop
(for Sandy)

Somebody is playing for you
on the outside
of Independent, by the impact doors.

Out of some extreme kindness, somebody
has told you where you cannot sleep.

Somebody is flashing their lights
to let you, specifically, know
a cop is around the corner,
and if somebody isn’t
someone else will.

Somebody has given the crosswalk signs palm lines
and a long, long life.

Somebody taught me, to read
was to live more than once;
or, was that many people?

Somebody has named that which we can pray to.
O’! Sweet praise, what we would have done without you.

Somebody has put change on the horizon.
It’s hard to see now that
                       all the coins have floated to the bottom.

If you think about it, all the signs are saying,
Thanks for visiting!, and if you don't think about it
all the symbols are saying the same thing.

Somebody is still playing
reggae chords and singing in soft sobriety for you
outside the Independent.

There is a point where you no longer think. Where your thoughts run out.
There is always somebody watching the welders.

Somebody is thanking you for your change.

They Are Bombing In The Hills

My father once described
the overwhelm of sulphur

from the bombs in the helicopter’s chassis
No longer scent

but instead substance
and in the sky

the sound of a thousand ears opening
when for a day he rode along

with his avalanche
technician friends

For those that don’t know
when it snows after a short,

wet period of rain followed
by the trailing off of temperatures

they fly around in helicopters

and bomb the mountain
terrain most likely to accumulate

the heavy new fall
on top of what has become what they call

a weak layer: an icy sheet,
or in other circumstances, crystals

arranged as a deck of cards
called “hoarfrost”

which occurs when warmer
precipitate cools dramatically

deforming the otherwise
solid lattice of flakes

collected on the ground Polarities
break, re-bond as plates, maiming

the integrity of their infrastructure
The risk is highways, railways,

ski tracks, below well-worn avalanche paths,
may be consumed

or otherwise obliterated
if an avalanche were allowed

to move its full weight
so the bombs are to control this

I dig a snow pit
in the great body continuing to fall around us,

step into its depths like a mouth
and read the cracks forming under the pressure

of my hand, bone and gene,
how I was taught to read the codes of the country

of instability emerging from the test, each
like a story, like I heard once When the snow would rest

and in the hills outside the city, if enough fell,
the people would ski