Jones' Nose Poem by Robert Ronnow

Their unspoken opinions
are like a pot of unknowable, unnamed meats
including skunk parts
one morsel of filet mignon

Family or workplace
longer the hours, years of the living
opinions accumulate
perception strained through mortality

This stew of ethics
holds together, blows apart
trees, planets, atoms, galaxies
on or about year 2000

One must not
express the certainty
that the child's coma-induced vision of a dead grandparent
did not actually happen in heaven

One must feign
respect for all beliefs however abjectly
death denying
because they are harmless as

ozone
zebra
xylophone
zygote


A
beautiful day follows
on Jones' Nose
ripe blueberries, black cherries