Morning fog like a thin layer of gauze lies on the hay field
that is lush and ripe
for a second mowing, and the sun is peaking over
the tree line as I walk home, musing about Bastille Day.
Old Donald of Orange and the French Wiz Kid
visited Napoleon’s tomb yesterday, both of them
bending a knee to the dream of empire, while
the bones of millions
bleach in the summer sun
among the poppies in France, the tundra in Russia
and the sands of the Middle East.
Like Carl Jung, I had a dream of a Great Turd
falling from heaven. Mine demolishes Versailles, the Kremlin,
Wall Street, The White House
and all the other fetid temples of empire.
The chicory and the Queen Anne’s lace along the roadside
comes back year after year,
but the dog shit on the asphalt
will be washed away by the next rain. So let us pray
that one day the pathology of power
and the adolescent fantasy of empire
may be washed away by a flood of liberté, égalité and fraternité!