Ballistics Read Online Free PDF

then everyone stopped thinking of him as wise.
    Let us be clear about something.
    Love is not as simple as getting up
    on the wrong side of the bed wearing the emperor’s clothes.
    No, it’s more like the way the pen
    feels after it has defeated the sword.
    It’s a little like the penny saved or the nine dropped stitches.
    You look at me through the halo of the last candle
    and tell me love is an ill wind
    that has no turning, a road that blows no good,
    but I am here to remind you,
    as our shadows tremble on the walls,
    that love is the early bird who is better late than never.

The Flight of the Statues
    The ancient Greeks … used to chain their
statues to prevent them from fleeing.
    —Michael Kimmelman
    It might have been the darkening sky
    that sent them running in all directions
    that afternoon as the air turned a pale yellow,
    but were they not used to standing out
    in the squares of our city
    in every kind of imaginable weather?
    Maybe they were frightened by a headline
    on a newspaper that was blowing by
    or was it the children in their martial arts uniforms?
    Did they finally learn about the humans
    they stood for as they pointed a sword at a cloud?
    Did they know something we did not?
    Whatever the cause, no one will forget
    the sight of all the white marble figures
    leaping from their pedestals and rushing away.
    In the parks, the guitarists fell silent.
    The vendor froze under his umbrella.
    A dog tried to hide in his owner’s shadow.
    Even the chess players under the trees
    looked up from their boards
    long enough to see the bronze generals
    dismount and run off, leaving their horses
    to peer down at the circling pigeons
    who were stealing a few more crumbs from the poor.

Passivity
    Tonight I turned off every light
    in this stone, slate-roofed cottage,
    then I walked out into the blackened woods
    and sat on a rock next to a bust
    of what looked like a sneering Roman consul,
    a mantle of concrete draped over his shoulders.
    I stared up at the ebbing quarter moon
    and the stars scattered like a handful of salt
    across the faraway sky,
    and I visited some of my new quandaries
    including where to live and what to do there,
    and leaning back to take in the sizable night,
    I arrived at the decision
    that I would never make another decision.
    Instead of darting this way or that,
    I would stand at a crossroads until my watch
    ran down and the clothes fell off me
    and were carried by a heavy rain out to sea.
    Instead of choosing one thing over another,
    I would do nothing but picture
    a little silver ball swinging back and forth from a cloud.
    I would celebrate only the two equinoxes
    and pass the rest of the time
    balancing a silver scale with silver coins.
    And I would see to it that the image of a seesaw—
    or teeter-totter as it once was called—
    was added to my family crest,
    stitched into that empty patch
    just below the broken plow
    and above the blindfolded bee.

Ornithography
    The legendary Cang Jie was said to
have invented writing after observing
the tracks of birds.
    A light snow last night,
    and now the earth falls open to a fresh page.
    A high wind is breaking up the clouds.
    Children wait for the yellow bus in a huddle,
    and under the feeder, some birds
    are busy writing short stories,
    poems, and letters to their mothers.
    A crow is working on an editorial.
    That chickadee is etching a list,
    and a robin walks back and forth
    composing the opening to her autobiography.
    All so prolific this morning,
    these expressive little creatures,
    and each with an alphabet of only two letters.
    A far cry from me watching
    in silence behind a window wondering
    what just frightened them into flight—
    a dog’s bark, a hawk overhead?
    or had they simply finished
    saying whatever it was they had to say?

Baby Listening
    According to the guest information directory,
    baby listening is a service offered by this seaside hotel.
    Baby listening—not a baby who happens to be listening,
    as I thought when I first