Full Emergency

by Eric E. Hyett

We do what we can,
like shepherds chatting idly

on a hillside in simple Afrikaans;
that accommodation easy as the moon

over Mauritius, prefigured as a marsh marigold.
Plaisance—do you request a full emergency please,

a full emergency? Or we could land on the coral-sand beach,
alloyed as copper & zinc, gearing up all night with

our cargo of baguettes & bloom. We are shy; we are in-
complete & failing to throttle back the night, red with

this terrible adjacency; far more straightforward
than we ever meant to be—Charlie, Charlie—

or we could go down in the midnight ocean:
dark savanna teeming with lion, gazelle.

Published on May 6, 2015