Generally cheerful institutions
school and hospital, The Constitution,
roadways with their yellow stitch lines.

Order on the mountainside, in the city,
the veneer is thin, the people thrifty,
the freedom to associate unlimited.

Smoke the cigarette, sound the subwoofer,
I woof and bay like every other dog, proof
one cannot escape the planet, life's foolproof.

Magic's secret- rabbit, lion- the inner
animus emerges from the hat. One eats magicians,
the other's skewered for dinner.

Thus, happy and sad at once, death a solace
and a fearsome fright. As the dashed lines pass,
confidently, and when necessary, I drive fast.

An afternoon, one hundred years of solitude
for our silver maple. Microscopic magnitudes:
the snake's skin, the fly's wing, the man's mood.