Tonight the helicopters colonize the stars

& the moon has gone dark

& the living birds perch tucked against leaf and trunk

Tonight I think of orchestration—the wheeling politicians

& their long game of hate

& guns

Tonight I’ll lie down in the soft bed and sleep

& wake

& the world will grow incrementally hotter

Tonight the traffic hums in all the ways—high- free- belt- and thru-

& by dawn the night will finish claiming its million dead

Each night we count about the same number

& those are just the ones with backbones

& we assign more value to anything with a spine

Tonight in politics they’re all exoskeletal old as dust

& perhaps the jellyfish is just the second largest animal without a heart