Ode in the Time of Refugees

Time was never interesting until now. Time was not
our current tyrant or an advancing doomsday
clock, but a titan devouring its young—no this
metaphor was not interesting at all. & doom, I drank it—
all of it, it was a dark beer—it was a nettle
in the shade of a summer spent saying good-bye
to biology, to the eggs I grew & shed & bled.
It was an English summer but felt like fall—
No, it was the winter of allowing time to catch up to me.
We live in interesting times: 2017, a saluki rescued from Doha,
with a notch in its ear for nobility, shivered on the asphalt
of Dulles, vaccinated, stamped, legal. I welcome the beast
from the East, greet it, habibi; the dislocation
in its eyes kin to the look in the eyes of the banned
behind us. In the airport a chorus of women sing:
This Land Is Your Land & forget the words. The song dies
after from the Redwoods. Our diamond deserts are lost in winter.

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