IN A MOMENT OF EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY, KERMIT PLAYS THE BANJO

If there is no one to hear,
where do the sounds
hide, when do they die? All this
and a greater unknowing, a hollowed,
regretful stump. That plop. And whose
voice is ever heard? Which darkness
weaves into space, sputtering
among stars into more
emptiness, spilling into
the deepest black, becoming
a greater zero? He ponders
the difficulties of greenness,
considers rainbows, looks up,
plucks the strings. Sings his song.

MAGPIE LOVE SONG

Note the magpie’s path above
this fence rail framing the
Sangre de Cristo, the way
clouds illuminate our breath. 
I recall the road from Taos, 
how we found ourselves lost,
uncaring among the pines and 
stone, like broken bottle bits 
sparkling at sunset. Together, still. 
You are that refraction rooting itself
in the sky, the bird’s eye piercing 
dawn. I am the wingtip, flashing now.

Robert Okaji lives in Indiana. He holds a BA in history, served without distinction in the U.S. Navy, and once won a goat-catching contest. He is the author of multiple chapbooks, including the 2021 Etchings Press Poetry Prize-winning My Mother’s Ghost Scrubs the Floor at 2 a.m., and his poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Book of Matches, Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, Buddhist Poetry Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Vox Populi, Wildness, and elsewhere.