Bin Ramke

I Love a Garden

My pet conifers my favored floral sprinkles
all through the grasses the wild the wilting

all the walls confound witness witness with wit
and will and wonder. Witness. Martyr.

And I like to photograph the flowers to shape
and shade the blooms and then to look once

or twice at the picture as the flower fades.

My room, my machine where witness is to cleverness
as martyr is to testament. Lie, lie cried

creation: hope is to happiness as fire
is to freedom. But the farm is to garden

as the robin is remembrance. Bluely of egg
and tenderly of taxidermy.

I Am Small

Our car was fierce enough;
no one could tell we were only ourselves.

William Stafford

A garden is a miniature. So am I.

The world is big. Too big for me.

A poem is a miniature. I made model airplanes
and cars (Model T Ford, B-29, other smaller.)

A novel is a miniature. The world is big.
A play is a miniature. The stage is small.

A garden is small in time and space, a place
enacting in miniature the enormity.

Too beautiful too big too vague too dangerous.
Little gestures of symmetry, attempts, sympathy,

terrariums (make a circle, an abstract
wall, a fence, make a bottle, put plants

in, other life, dogs,
water, light, hope.)

Accidental Deity

Centuries of theology led to this—a borrowed world broken.
I assumed the role of God when no other hands rose:
I am presenting a united front
but there was a moment I lost track—I was young

I knew nowhere, desired no place,
place cannot end well. We gods end
with our worlds, but only in a past. It takes time
to notice the lessening glow

like a meteor passing bad weather leaving
lights as of a small car in the distance blinking braking
and now we know what we missed—
a version of past to be proud of. Like a visit home.

Like a service in a near-forgotten basilica echoing
a welcome or warning indifferently.
For me the mountains do not like rams ramble
and skip among their ewes, the hills fail

to delight like lambs. I called
angels back for consultation. I lingered
in the hallways after meetings of the board.
I examined my conscience.

I find I did nothing wrong; I lived well and
prospered for a time. I gave you every chance.
The floods and famines were
pedagogically sound. Disease is part of a
process. Your prayers amused us to the end.

Bin Ramke's fifteenth book of poems, which includes the poems in this issue, will appear from Omnidawn in 2027. He currently teaches at the University of Denver.