Ambience

It’s unclear whether the constant voices

filigreed with static through

the speakers are from elsewhere on

this base, or around the curve

of the planet, or from other systems, even

from Earth …

They have the sound of idleness, unwilling

to give up gossip because then

the loneliness would return; or of

competence listing monotonous triumphs;

or soldiers on a dormant front, potential

panic and death never too far from

their tone … Should I be summoned

I’ll hear it and leap into action,

however low the volume.

Outside, beyond the windows that

are something beyond glass,

the rain descends constantly

on rock. All conceivable

streams and rivulets flow. I’ve been told but

forget why water doesn’t cover everything.

Periodically, perhaps regularly,

I repeat into silence a mutated line:

Je suis comme le roi d’un planète pluvieux,

and feel unfading satisfaction.

Will the rain wear even basalt cliffs to mud?

No, because elsewhere, not where I am,

volcanoes provide eventual soil,

which hisses in the downpour and succumbs.

A few bacteria assault each other,

the seas, like all seas, are already blood;

but nothing shall peer in at me

for another hundred million years.

***

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press. Three collections of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), and THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, September 2023). Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc. Website: frederickpollack.com.