POEM: TIPS AND ROOTS dedicated to Doris Lessing, and my Sweet One

TIPS AND ROOTS

dedicated to Doris Lessing, and my Sweet One

A fog of sun-topped dust

The kind that dries up

What water still lives

In the throat,

In the nose

Rolls

Toward us from the

Present-past-future.

All trees', all plants'

Tips are wilted,

Roots are dry,

And will not hold

Instead, they throw

—Like a hand—

They throw the soil up

Into the wind,

As the air pushes it

—powdered clay—

Pushes it down

Down to

The lower lung lobes

On up

Burying us

Speck

By speck;

Inside, out.

The dreams we’d set our eye to

The stories our ear to

Had whispered us

The legend

Of survival,

Of the fittest,

How this must be we:

The masters

Of impossible machines

And journeys. 

The engineers

Of obedient control.

We will compete

To make a machine

That will outrun the cloud

That will swallow all

The dust,

Drown it inside

Sterile water;

A machine that will,

As payment,

Remake us

In the image

Of nothing

That ever

Existed,

Of something

That never

Had to care

For the tips,

For the roots.