‘God’s Brain’ by Peter Wild (1940-2009)

    
    
This is what happens to God’s thoughts

                                    as they become more secular,

         for uncounted ages a white mass

                                        of seething cottage cheese

                                 expanding over the lovely altiplano

                and doing exactly what it has to do

                                                   entirely happy with itself,

until reaching the edge of the table

                                gobs of it begin falling off,

                  dropping there, the hills of Barstow, California,

                          beside the rusted railroad

                                                  along the sandy river,

      the sulfurous curd

                       of its own permanent sunset.

And the people living there now?

                                   They have a vague memory

           from childhood of once having escaped from the circus.

       If you ask them, they won’t say

                that the Great Buddha himself sometimes hurried,

            but as they stand there thinking about it

                        you can see the possibility

                                                  quivering on their lips.

(published in Permafrost, vol. 17, 1995)

‘Research Trip, Yucca Valley’ by Peter Wild (1940-2009)

    

     
Tired of being homeless,

                   of being fed by the ravens

             because women won’t believe them,

       at night the Joshua trees

   begin walking out of the mountains toward town

                   where they, too, will put their money down

                               and eat in restaurants

           while the tourists look,

        shocked at what’s happened to the world.

But when the sun soars up,

      at that sudden burst, their first challenge,

          they stop, like any crazed soldiers

                                                     caught in a minefield

                      thinking that by standing still

                                                   they’ll be invisible.

Going home on this flying research trip

                           on which at the end of the desert road

              we found the widow waiting at her door,

                                                                         who by magic

     handed us the manuscript of the nephew

                    all his life secretly in love with his cousin,

         the first thing in the morning

                                          you rush bushy-tailed

                         out of the Oasis of Eden Motel

               and insisting I take your picture with one

                                       strike your actress’s crepuscular pose,

                            laughing that the less I know

                                              the more you’re full of joy.

(published in  Permafrost, vol. 17, 1995)