Some of its most avowed
practitioners have turned away
from science, its boundaries,
its manipulative procedures.

They are pacifists now
living in the desert where,
according to a comforting
formulation, rigid timelessness
heralds a claim of dominance.

Though we are deep inside its
belly I do not ask them to show me
the China Lake petroglyphs…

deeper into the bardo still,
where the rockets are joined with
their lichen you may find yourself
face to face with a moment
of immanence,

depending on your feelings
concerning the genesis and validity
of this threshold where nature
metaphors recur again and again…

in its guise as all human endeavor
hoarded high upon itself
in a gesture of universal mastery
time was bound to lose its way.

Now there is nothing it has not maimed.

—

Bryan D. Price’s poetry has appeared in DIAGRAM, Manhattanville Review, Menacing Hedge, and Unbroken Journal. He lives and teaches in the suburbs of southern California where he writes about time, memory, utopia, and its opposite.