Poetry
three
LA SLOWTERIA

CONTRACT
We count
Your
completion of duties you will be expected
All are expected to serve
the
months
you must consider this
your primary employment
Your signature
your acceptance and your status
at will
TOTALITY
We know exactly when
the moon will pass again
between the sun and the earth
and again years from now
the details of totality
we know it will be
a narrow path across Earth
we know we will again be
older and wearing special glasses
bought from special places
to shield our eyes
the only way to really see
and how far west
we must go
in this country
I know my parents
drove us across
one summer these states
I knew they were teachers
that they were part
of the system
that there was this
thing called system
because it was a word
that they used often
and it meant something
about the way they were
allowed to love us
and each other
a whole summer long
to keep getting paid
I came to know the history
of this system
and some of the key
players who shaped it
a certain way
so that many years
from then
we could have mothers
and fathers who worked
or didn't work
or none to drive us
or dying
to drive us across
the contiguous states
with some money to pay
to look out at the world
from on top of horses
to say this is where
our ancestors stood
at the system coming
for them worse
than the seasons
I knew a great many things
by what state they were in
after work
still willing
the word system
and though they knew
a certain comfort there
they knew of other systems
in other places
and had studied
this system
its laws of motion
to know it was a certainty
the day would come here
they talked about it often
with their friends
from iran and panama
who were brought here
by the same system
also to study its malfunction
you come to know
when to look up
into space
in the future
for something
that comes only a few
times in a life
you come to know
how bad
and beautiful
can co-exist not forever
we know all of this
but we don't know when
the new system will come
neither the day
nor the year
when we will not need
to buy something else
to see and to be perhaps safer
to know it is there