Kilimanjaro

This sky is full of shifting continents;
lightning bridges, thunder telegraphs
and con-trail crosstalk. Was I ever meant
to live this way? Will I ever laugh
at raisins dying in the sun? Intent
on work; my numbers, figures, lines and graphs
will not protect me from the sentiment
that leaps from ambush, from a photograph:

white glaciers shrinking under tropic skies,
above the heat-miraged savanna. Skull-
faced drought stands in the open doors of full
storehouses, mocking. I make no reply
but private calculus of global loss:
my heart, still hanging from the Southern Cross.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside