No Other Kind of World

Jeff Hardin’s No Other Kind of World explores our “need to witness miracles” within a world that too often favors “soapbox diatribes/or mournful tones.” Perhaps we no longer recognize our own faces, unaware of what remains hidden inside, or just underneath, our landscapes or words. We wander an immeasurable world, one in which the Self attempts to know what knowing is, and calls out to others, searching for survivors this side of the millennium. Despite new threats of “a coming Inquisition,” Hardin “charts a course toward mercy,” seeking “the kind of understanding/that comes when two or more are gathered.”

IN THE PARK
Seven boys seem to think they’re birds.
They caw and hoot, running beneath
a stretch of thinned-out trees.  They raise
their arms to steer themselves toward each other
and through this maze of limbs dipped low.
Every minute growing louder seems to lessen.
And we talk of a need to witness miracles,
everyone flying so close at each other
until the last possible moment,
                                                then veering . . .