What Could I Have Done, You Ask

words are embryonic history
genesis on street corners and in alleys –

and how you sit in front of your window
watching chipmunks and chickadees compete
in the snow-banks of the patio
for the seeds you spread (and by running
to the window to chase away squirrels
and back to your seat) in a scene which conforms

to your sense of what is fair in life
and who will and who won’t survive

and how worlds drown in the bile of events

how you are helpless in the face of aggression
yet aggrieve each event you can’t conduct

having learned nothing from the true nature of power
which is to become powerless

you weave and weave words into the wonder of stories
and tell them on every street corner of this room

until their repetition becomes the history of one