Existential Boy Scout

So God it seems is an existential boy scout.
Mischievously striking matches of creation
then tossing them into the either, the void, the cosmos
permitting them to combust; burn wildly or fizzle,
grow warm and beautiful or sizzle and spit.
And after each ignition God turns a back to them
and benignly leaves these sparks to the winds of fate, the random forces,
and the will of each creation to make what they might
out of their moment of energy manifest into their moment of reality.

I Drink the Juice

I taste the orange juice
citrus sweet
and feel recharged and vitalized
except for a slight after-taste
that reminds me of the smell of oily pesticides
fogged on the trees one breezeless morning
and the slight salt sweat taste
dripped from the brow of Guatemalan
illegals who bend and reach 10 hours a day
And there is a dank diesel stench
of freighters and trucks that haul
the fruit some thousand miles
and the carbide smell of war and revolution
of those who unwittingly protect this
precious fuel
and the slight hot paper waxy-sided
that keeps it fresh and clean
while water runs through those stamping machines
and gushes fetid into the stream
so I may drink the product deep
and taste the juice
so bitter sweet.

Vantage Point

It is a day like any other
But this day has a vantage point.

Not unlike
Climbing the tallest tree,
With hopes of a view
Closer to the farthest horizon,
Yet yielding nothing
But more trees
Beech green and gray
Oak stretching tall
Pine whistling secret melodies.

Their past is written
In concentric loops
Both tight and loose
Dendrochronologies stored in locked trunks,
They show nothing of the future
They offer no divining stick
Hedging toward a likely bet,
Their stories tell only what was.

A leaf drifts.
It wobbles down
Turning slowly on a brief breeze
Then lands upon a compass rose
Of other leaves and sticks
And points the way
On a map I know I know
But cannot read
And so I am left to discover
My course
Somehow
Having been so chosen.