Corncob Corncob

Corncob, Corncob, glowing bright,
won't you be my friend tomorrow,
and won't you bring me thirty cats
or at least a thousand mice?

Corncob, Corncob, flying high,
won't you please wear my cravat,
and won't you sing me songs about
Barack Obama and his kids?

Corncob, Corncob, watergun,
won't you kernel agriculture,
and won't you field water run
and soybean meal to pass the time?

Evening on the Peninsula

The Kitsap kids, happy and frozen,
poke tubes of tenticles on the side of the dock
and don't
think about
the nature of Nordic lands,
from which Plsb was uprooted.
They brought it here and used scotch tape
to attach it to the rest of the peninsula;
I don't find their actions sound, although
I do love the results.

86 trillion boats
(give or take 85.99999999999 boats)
float upon the waters. They are surrounded by:
       trees
       fishes
       more boats
       babies
       scotch tape
       duct tape
       masking tape
       glue
       pastries
       antique goods,
and, of course,
the Kitsap kids, happy and soaking wet.

James Porter at 25 Years, Part 1

This year all
of the fruit
got too ripe
to eat.

On the Rise of Civilizations

Men of old had their vision:
to build a complexity in which
a thousand, ten thousand, ten million men
can reap the benefits of one another;

to abandon the wilderness, with its
meager portions and threat of starvation,
and find a flooding river valley in which to
compile men and knowledge and goods (and bads);

to be more efficient, not
relying on fickle animals and gathered plants,
but packing energy into tiny spaces,
to feed ten million men with little soil.

And so
they set to work.

We found the largest seeds,
we took the tallest grasses,
leaves were cast out in favor
of hearty kernels of protein, oil, sugars;

planting, planting, planting, planting,
and then reaping, reaping, reaping,
finding the juiciest, sweetest fruit,
and putting it back in the soil,

(from whence it came)

Repeating, repeating the process
for thousands of generations until
the seeds and the fruits, themselves
coming from fertile land, allow us to live in a fertile culture extending for thousands upon thousands upon more thousands of years.

The humble oat;
the noble, fortifying nuts -- almond, cashew, walnut;
the friendly green seed of the pumpkin and
the cheerful seed of the bright sunflower;
the fruit of the elegant grapevine and
the small, sweet, lovely cherry:

All the seeds sown by mankind
have come down to this:
my granola snack.