Scoping Gets Ahead of Itself

The businessmen in black ties
and with wallets swollen with
little cards stand at the roadside,
staring across the fields.
One says, mules make a special glue.
Another says their feed could be poisoned
to make room for storage sheds
and houses bargaining in the farmlands.
Someone’s always got a design:
peach-scented envelopes, a can opener
shaped like a can, shoes named after
cookies, cars that run on manna.
And today, one says, mules
could be made to run like lemmings
into the sea. Cell-tower interference
could be an advantage here.
But as they stride towards their car,
they never ponder this:
if a mule falls into the sea
and no one is around to hear the leap . . .
perhaps they know the answer,
in practical fact, imagining
bloated hides with ears like fins
stiff in the wake. Might they wait on
the shore and stick a letter inside the husk,
watch it founder east of desire,
west of transubstantiation, from
which all tracks flow, halleluiah.
One, drinking from a large sifter
with an umbrella poking out,
says, it took a mule
to make Darwin chortle.
A conundrum for men
wanting to raze the farm, erect
metal, sliding doors, touchpads
for entry, reciting:
please don’t think of arriving
after seven, we’ll be closed.
Go to dinner. Wait by the ocean
for a soggy mule to drift in.
You can ride it
until the message inside
breaks down, chromosome
by chromosome in a cabaret
of fluids, to become something purer.
One says, slamming the car door,
the future belongs to me;
the other says. let’s pack it in.