Colie Hoffman

Paperwork

Just last week I read in the Times
That National Parks will offer comment card
Holders on trees for birds to drop their opinions.
How is our woodland? Rate the following, 1 to 5.

To no one’s surprise, the results click with focus group feedback:
Blue jays full of temper, sparrows cheep-cheep with optimism,
Most of the cards eaten by squirrels.
No one else left a trace, except one suggestion
Spelled out in poop by a rogue seagull
Requesting more liquor stores
And places that sell lottery tickets.
Global warming will have ALL our asses, he wrote,
The “e” in “asses” backward and earnest
Like a third-grader,
So let’s party while we can.

Sometimes I think we are all working together here:
This factory of the literal and the literary,
Translating our Babel of divergent intentions
Into polar fleece and synthetic pine,
Products both useful and pleasing to the touch.

How else could we find our way
Through this dark room?
Its checkboxes and form letters,
Its looming El Niño
Of strange and brilliant ocean birds
Blown in from the Pacific without their papers,
Full of tattoos, jonesing for revolution.

 

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