On hoping to see one monarch butterfly this summer
The ult
imate hu
man race is to
find & name
all the spec
ies that ex
ist before
we kill
them. I
hate rad
ically en
jambed p
oems but
it should
hurt to
read about
our stu
pidity.
Imagine a
world with
out in
dustry and
with bu
ffalo and
carrier
pigeons
and then
your head
will bloom
with azaleas
on the
inside where
imagination
keeps a
summer home. I’ve
seen two bears
up close and
no wolves e
ven though
they used
to own
this place. But
I have five
spatulas so
there’s reason
to think I
can flip
an egg in an
egg emer
gency and one
Zippo I use
to hold my
place in
books, two of
many just
ification
s for all my
stuff and all
your stuff
that add
up to no
thing.
The thing we are doing is insane
The orchestra of birds warms up
as the sun rises and I wonder
if we should hold Christmas early
for the kids who won’t make it
to December, I love the birds
and morning’s work ethic
and every day there isn’t
another school shooting is heaven
for a while, the world sounds
so peaceful and flutish, I would say
oboeish right now, I hear a bit
of triangle even, reminding me
of Tchaikovsky’s symphony
for triangle and spoons,
but I’ve heard nothing like a gunshot
ever in nature unless the snap
of tree limbs in an ice storm
counts, and Hanukkah
and all its spellings
and Halloween and July Fourth
should be celebrated with dreidels
and candy and firecrackers
every day if we’re not
going to fix the problem we’re having
keeping kids alive, wasn’t this poem
going to be an aubade,
I hear my inner conch shell ask
when I hold my inner ear to it,
but no, this was going to be
whatever this is, a lament,
a complaint, a wish made
as too many candles
on too many cakes
will never be blown out
How I proposed to my wife
While on my knee that needs to be replaced,
I said I don’t have health insurance,
you have health insurance, let’s get married,
and she said this is exactly
as I always dreamed it would be
in a country that values guns
more than life itself. Now take away
me getting down on my knee and the bit
about guns and the bit about
dreaming of marriage her whole life
and you have an accurate picture of romance
in the States in 2023. Not
that the bit about guns isn’t true.
But my position is you can and probably should lie
throughout a poem but not at the end
and not about dogs and not about what love is
and isn’t, it is me making her breakfast
every morning but is not me
making her poached eggs, she likes oatmeal
and pancakes on Sundays
and me naked and clothed, limping
or wearing a fez if I had a fez to wear
and insured against the ills that befall the flesh
in a country that values corporations
and guns and for the longest time baseball
more than life itself. But baseball
isn’t very popular anymore, I know
players are out there trotting around diamonds
but who pays attention with all the people
being shot and trying not to be one of them
and robbing banks to pay the dentist
eight hundred dollars for pulling a tooth
or the elbow guy two hundred for looking at
and confirming that, yes, this is your elbow
and yes, pain certainly hurts.
For some reason, moonlight asked me to write this poem
I once saved a man’s tongue by jamming a pen
in his mouth during a grand mal seizure.
His skin glistened in streetlight
on Cherry Street in Grand Rapids
as the rope knots of his muscles tightened.
When the pen broke, blue ink couldn’t think
of anything to say all over his face.
People stopped what they were doing
to be terrified by how delicate the electronics
of a mind are, to be helpless together
instead of helpless alone. He sat with his back
to a building for a long time after the seizure.
I told him about the pen and ink as the kite
of his spirit settled back into his body
from wherever it had flown. You know the feeling
in summer after a storm passes and the birds
start gossiping again and the sun remembers us
and time itself seems to shine? I should have asked
if he was that feeling in a torn white shirt
and not if he needed help getting home,
which everyone needs and almost no one gets.
He said no, thanked me, climbed out
of our conversation and walked
from one island of streetlight to another
until he turned a corner and entered memory,
that thimble with an appetite for oceans and skies.
Bob Hicok’s most recent collection is Breathe (Copper Canyon Press, 2026).
Header photo by Anselmo Rodrigues, courtesy Pixabay.
