All flesh is grass.
—Isaiah 40:6

War is now continuous, just as Orwell warned,
if not here, then there. If not us, then them.
If not today . . . today. 

I no longer flick on the news first thing 
before coffee. Now the news is more like a job—
something we’re doing before we know it, 
an old headache gone chronic. Forgive me, O Zion,
forgive me, Ninevah: each day is like that first time,
after a death, when you wake untroubled.

And it's not just that Life goes on, 
though it does. Not just 
The news numbs us, as it will. 

It's the unholy shrill of cruise missiles
and drones reading the well-mapped streets, 
it's brothers I know and don’t know 
at their radar screens far from the smoke
and screams, shattered bridges 
heading downstream.

It's all this news In the air, as we say
of truths so true they needn’t be verified.

Imagine a war made entirely of air.

Still that voice is borne on jet wings,
an old voice keen as wind wagging the bomb tails.

The voice out of such wilderness says, Cry.
And I say once again, What shall I cry?

Onstage, many guitarists
look like they're still
fifteen years old,
practicing 
in front of 
a full-length mirror,
leaping, windmilling,
grimacing on the high notes
to show the pain
of genius.

They remind me
of my boyhood cat,
Cassius, who used to
carry a marble secretly
in his mouth, only to drop it 
down the cellar stairs
—ptui!—watching
with panther-tense 
muscles, till down
he'd leap, catching
that cat's eye
right before it plonked
into the furnace.

I mean, it was 
amazing to watch, 
acrobatic and
surely sufficient proof 
that cats have souls, 
not to mention
God's own sense
of good humor.

But as soon as anyone
noticed his act,
he stopped and stalked
away regally.

My favorite
musicians stand
still as stumps, 
spotlight or no, 
with eyes closed in 
private communion 
with we know not what,
or maybe just gazing
down with rapt
amazement
at the fury and surprise 
of their own hands.
                        

Isn't baby Dave just cute-and-a-half
all rampant on his backyard bath towel?
Don’t you love that drooly moonhead? 

Big sucker, as always, for flattery's coo,
whimsy's falsetto, still he's solid as a log.
With wispy senior-citizen hair, even.

But very little indication yet of the cloud-faced 
teenager to come, with fierce, righteous 
opinions on Vietnam and Watergate.

Hard to babytalk, babygrin that toothless face
and think: future mortgage holder.
Will alphabetize his book collection.

For now his sense of humor mostly involves
Dad's funnyface and the color red,
so when he develops his fine-tuned taste

for late-Fifties jazz, well, it's just a big
surprise to all. On the other hand, 
guide those pudgy fingers to a bottle

or soda cracker, and Dave will begin
to seem like himself, lighting up like 
a senator in an applause-filled ballroom.

Sure, later Dave'll express a preference
for mayo over mustard, Twain over James.
All in good time he'll refuse asparagus

and grand opera, but now, look!
—how he opens those adorable pink lips
in the international sign for More.