ManicDDaily

Diorama from North American Mammals Section of the American Museum of Natural History (from AMNH’s site)

White Flag

We go to the museum
after a spat, the white flag
between us deep rose
as it’s raised and crimped a bit
as lips tend to be
aborting retort, though

it unfurls soon enough
under the spiny heights of browned bones
in smiles that flash,
rather than bare,
our teeth (slightly yellowing).

Until we’re faced with a true war – man
against planet – and root together, on the wrong
side of the diorama, for the two wolves’ bristling run
across a snow as flat as cloth, a painted
peace, shivering

suddenly
even in the cramped
corridor, the darkness
a furred hood, wishing, as one, for somewhere’s
frozen luminescence, somewhere’s crust
of North-lit pine, somewhere’s fanged
wind, sharp
possibility, bite not yet
surrendered.

Quiet
walking back
to the train.

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Here’s a rather odd poem for dVerse Poets Pub’s prompt on peace hosted by Mary Kling.  The picture is a picture of one of the newly restored dioramas at the wonderful American Museum of Natural History in NYC.