Wird

This world is so weird, either we're

Wired wrong for it or it's a joke.

Nothing capable of mercy

Is capable of innocence.



Nothing innocent, say, the sun

Or the earth shrugging in its skin,

Is anything but pitiless

If we plead for something different.



And if life, per Darwin's smartest

Metaphor, is but one damned tree,

Then the world-chopper, word-chopping

Poet's a nodule on a root



Deep underground, where tree meets dirt,

One of the points life pushes in,

By algorithm, not foresight,

With each dim, mechanical poem:



"Every time this is good, I say

'This is good,' to myself, and hope

That by acknowledging the good

I've somehow made the most of it."