Near Kolob, Halloween 2017

A ghost, he said, is someone living too long,
Too damn long in my case. A ghost’s without
Visible means of support, and so is poor
And often falls or stumbles. A ghost grows
Less and less kind, with no one of its kind
To commiserate. (Ghosts never see ghosts.)
A ghost resents the fully, appropriately alive
Bodies all around it for being what it isn’t,
Not anymore. A ghost blames the living
Who once loved it, who it once loved,
For moving on without it, for not loving it,
As if it still belonged among the living.
A ghost is an impostor, a liar, a subtle show,
The disturbance of air under a bird’s wing. . .
He paused. He looked pretty poorly. His face
Was an intersection of halos and shadows.
His grey-black clothes hung dusty and worn.
He had no wallet and no money for one.
Many old injuries announced themselves
In the agonizing angles of fingers and limbs.
Ghosts, he resumed, would like to be kind,
To be lovely and loved. A ghost would like
Not to blame the lusciously alive for its pallid
Predicament. But a ghost has no business
Hanging around, breathing, and knows only
Its own cowardice stops it when it should go.

While Mrs. Death Stands Just Inside, Wiping Her Hands, 30 October 2017

The taste of the small coal I kept swallowing
Came back up, burning, and I swallowed
Once more. One more day, the sun a coal
Coming up at dawn. I thought of Anne
In her Mercury Cougar, glass of vodka
In one hand, traveling with the garage door
Closed. Can’t go that way anymore. Exhaust
From a Prius couldn’t dizzy a dog. Nowadays,
Guns and opioids take ten times the minds
Used to surrender to tailpipes and alcohol.
Nowadays, if you want to fall, might as well fall.
I’ve never met a Mr. Death, except in a mirror
Maybe. Those eyes. I’ve been married to two
Deaths, fifteen years altogether. My first
Death steadily devoured herself until she was
Entirely gone, her own coals gone to ashes,
Six little urns, one for her, one each for unborn
Daughter, daughter, daughter, two for pets.
Nothing else left. Whereupon, the second
Mrs. Death, her twin, quickly slipped in
And began devouring me instead. It’s taken
Her a while. She’s a very particular eater.
I’ve never been healthy enough for her.
She nibbled me around the corners and complained
Occasionally the first several years, warily.
I thought I might last her. But she got nearer
My heart and started eating faster. Lately
It’s almost been a race. Can I muster the kick
To get what’s left of me past her, before
It’s too late for any pretense of choice
In the matter, or will she be left like Saturn,
Lips still dribbling, eyes wide with horror,
Nothing else left her? That’s unkind.
She’s not a bad mother. She has a living daughter.
She never set out to be Mrs. Death. Neither
Did her sister. Those dark eyes in the mirror.

East Rim, Zion, 29 October 2017

Daughter and her Grandmother were back
At the house, watching one of the movie
Versions of Alice that fine final afternoon.
Body, mind, and awareness were loitering
At a picnic table in the park. Pumpkin carving
Was scheduled for a couple hours later.
Nothing more exciting or ordinary than this world.
One entered it, became infected in due course,
And then spent the rest of one’s moments
Either wondering how and why one had entered,
Or bowing and scraping to curry favor
With some shapeshifting ghost of a creator,
Or ignoring the compound problem altogether.
Impermanent world, impermanent everything,
Permanent dilemma: what was so ordinary
About a spinning rock giving birth
To living and hunting and fleeing and dying?
The weakening autumn sunlight lowered
Itself down into the high sandstone mesas
Like a dying man easing into an armchair,
Craving a familiar comfort no longer there.

Under West Temple, Zion, 28 October 2017

Temple to some of us, nothing at all to itself,
The rock wall stood changing so gradually
Whole human generations could thrive
And die before the next major rockfall.
Hare sat in the shade near the trailhead,
Heart hammering with the usual dread.
More bad news on the way today, more
Dry weather, cooling nights, tomorrow time
To be prey. How could a planet of insensate
Minerals so lustily generate species of prey?
Hare trembled uncontrollably and never napped.
Hare knew in his featherweight bones the real
Reason that plodding tortoise invariably won.
Between the start and the finish, something
Always pounced and devoured the speedier one.

Melancholy, Utah, 27 October 2017

You may have noticed how frequently great
Mansions, museums, walls, and Taj Mahals
Were completed just before the dreamer
Died, or just after, or sometimes never,

How many castles were ruined barely
Occupied, how many structures, decades
In the planning and constructing, were just
A few years or never inhabited,

And the same is true of journeys and quests,
Moses felled in sight of the Promised Land,
Magellan cut down in the Philippines,

And of the dreams of the anonymous,
The unfinished yard, the sculpture garden,
The complete genealogy, these poems. . . .

Cedar, 26 October 2017

Humbaba knew they were coming for him,
Civilization and its lover, awareness in flesh,
Knew the numbers were against him,
Knew his little era in the trees was over.
He wondered if he should thank the woods
For making a deal with chaos to give life,
However temporary, however pain threaded,
However comprised of his own limitations,
To him, destined to be disowned, deleted,
Defeated by his betters in the soul wars.
Last times were only for those with more
Times yet to live. For the doomed monster
Who once fancied himself the guardian
And protector of his dappled world, now
Is not the last time but the no time ever was.

Sunset Cinema, Saint George, Utah, 25 October 2017

The radio news discussed research
Using donated bits of healthy brain
Tissue surrendered by volunteers who
Were having their unhealthy brain tissue
Surgically removed and might otherwise
Waste a bit of who they used to be
That had to be cleared to get at the disease.
Living, working bits the size of sugar cubes
Were diced and studied, kept alive
And digitized after having been rushed
From the operating theater to the lab.
In the movie theater, meanwhile, a matinee
Considered the problem of identity, when
And if memory could be implanted whole
From one head to another or from one head
To a machine or from a machine to a head.
“Sometimes love means being a stranger.”
A lot of shooting, stabbing, punching,
Kicking, strangling, dying, and lying involved,
Apparently, in toxic rains and random snows.
Did you remember who I was in these lines
When I first introduced myself to you?
I asked, but you had forgotten already
Who I was to dare to ask you who you were.
A beautifully digitized model of a naked
Neuron from a real human being, available
Online now for researchers to study for free.

Red Cliffs, Utah, 24 October 2017

Last night I dreamed that I was on retreat—
I, or whatever element of self-awareness
Inhabited the perspectives of that dream.

It was winter in the mountains. Snow drifted
To my stooped shoulders. We were getting
Ready to board a boat and set out to sea,

Never mind we were landlocked in pines.
The retreat was of the spiritual, not military, 
Type, although there was talk of surrender.

Daughter was the only child among dozens
Of shadowy faced, mostly nameless adults,
And she was on a screen, telling classmates

About the retreat and the coming trip to sea,
Apparently as her make-up assignment.
In the white-washed great hall of a lodge 

We all gathered for a guided meditation 
Before our breakfast and departure. I ended
In the very center of the front row somehow

And was startled when the leader, a woman 
With abundant dark hair and something 
Vaguely Italianate about her, asked me 

To guide the group. I panicked. Who was I,
Who barely knew the basics of a sit, to guide
Serious devotees heading out to sea?

I began intoning, inanely, “relax your mind.”
Someone several rows behind me hissed,
“No!” and I realized it was too soon for mind.

So I gamely reviewed our limbs and torsos,
Suggesting that we imagine our spines
Were stacks of china plates neatly placed

In a cupboard, and so on, knowing I was
Doing a miserable job and quitting too soon.
When I finished, others stood and whispered. 

All the women were vaguely like the leader
Who had asked me to guide the sit—dark,
Vaguely Italianate, youngish, maybe lovely,

Although none of them had faces. Two
Stooped over me where I still sat and said
That one of the men was angry I was there,

That I wasn’t spiritual, that I drank, that I ate
Poorly, that I did not practice right attitudes.
Then they faded and the shadow of the man,

Who in appearance was entirely shadow,
Stretched down over me and coldly said,
“You don’t belong here.” I looked up

And answered, “Belonging and excluding
Are the origins of all wars, my friend.” I woke 
At that point, pleased with my dream self,

And I remained energized all morning, until,
Sitting under the Red Cliffs with a bag lunch,
I thought, He was right. I don’t belong here.

Aestimatus Sum, 23 October 2017

Rebellion came naturally to a son of Korach.
You have too much, too many rules, too
Many people, too much, I accused the world.
True, I composed glorious things for Zion,
But the end of all praise is lamentation. I am
Counted among those who descended,
Katabatic, in the mad hope of bringing
Back a soul. I became a voice without help,
Without strength, crying out from the grave
I dug to lie down in but could not stand: You!
World! You would have me be still, will have me
Still, will swallow me in my long fall. I am not
A son you would care to remember. I am not
The one you will recall. My words will sing
In someone else’s voice at their moment
Of dying, someone capable of resurrection,
In the line of your direct descent. I am free
Only as you will release me among the dead
And do not make me come back. I am free
Only insofar as you will let me lie quietly,
Let your wrath and your terrors pass over me
In the dirt of your forgetfulness, my dreams
Of friends and lovers kept far from me in the dark.

Kaibab Plateau, 22 October 2017

One night in the woods outside Flagstaff,
An eerie mariachi band seemed to rehearse
In the next cabin over. The following morning
Daughter and body found the same band
Playing the same tunes in the courtyard
Of the museum. Was it? Dia de los muertos
Was still ten days away, but at the museum
They were celebrating early, the courtyard
Lined with colorful skulls and skeletons
And, in the shade, rows of folding tables
Set out with cornucopia of the same, plus
Skeleton dolls, playing cards, incense sticks,
Votive candles, photos of lost loved ones,
Favorite beverages and snacks of the dead,
Tending toward comfort food, beer, and pop.
At one table a man sat eagerly explaining
His family photographs and mementos,
The tiny wedding picture of his grandparents
Married at fifteen (but they look a lot older,
Don’t they?), the worn outfielder gloves, soft
As chamois (my great grandfather played
Minor league, before he served in the War).
Daughter joined the line and had her face
Disguised as a lipless skull, accessorized
With flamboyant blue and purple spangles.
After the all-women mariachi band finished
We left with our lunch in a sack, heading
North up and over the Kaibab Plateau toward
Zion, the stern panorama of velvet red cliffs
And pale mesas arrayed before our descent
To whatever was left of the surprises of life,
The skull face in the back seat intent
On a story about an orphaned wizard,
The bearded skull in the front intent
On finding one more morning’s resurrection.

Sedona, Arizona, 21 October 2017

Another secret garden floats into awareness.
The book was on the floor of the cottage
Under a chair. The cafe by the same name
Sat under a cedar and oaks in the heart
Of prosperity searching for transcendence.
Are you tired of this existence, these
Conditions, yet? The pleasantest places
Can break your spine. The pleasantest
Moments card catastrophe like wool.
The reason the garden was secret, was
Locked, was overgrown, was a death.
Death’s long, two-pointed ladder points
Toward emptiness still, and who does not
Fall off still has to climb down to where all
The ladders start. I want! I want! Lean a ladder
On the moon, but once you have escaped
That far, then what? The moon’s not Lucian’s
Nor Verne’s nor Méliès’ but Armstrong’s.
And the real secret of the garden? There
Had to have been, somewhere once,
The momentary intersection when the last
Population, the last village ancestral to all
Of us, engaged with the first stories of origins.
But even that was not the Garden. The real,
Walled in, locked, and unknown thought was
That there could be something else at all,
That it was possible the world was magical,
When the only magic was the ability to think
Of a magic in a world that abjured magic.
See, I think this world is dreaming us,
Our gardens and our ladders, because it wants
To escape itself, because it is longing
To evolve into a world for something else.
Up in the slopes around the shops, the various
Retreats and seminar sites still collect
Material resources, but as they sit, embrace,
And pray, the wanting never goes away.

Unknown, 20 October 2017

The phone screen glows one word,
“Unknown.” I refuse to pick up.
I’m not ready yet. I didn’t run away
To this damned planet to come home
The same. I want to know the true
Identity of the Angel before I quit
Scraping the fountains at night for change.
When you’re lost, you begin to believe
That you might be close to home, might be
Almost on top of it without knowing it.
Maybe a small move, over here or there,
Maybe a new familiar, maybe a shift
In the manner of moving, in the strategy
Of the search, in the plan of attack will do
The trick. You forget you chose to run away.
You forget you’re inside a forest you
Didn’t make, a nervy canopy of swaying
Twig tips whispering, inhabited by ghosts
And shape-shifting memories. You’re here,
But you’re never alone enough to know
What you ever were before, why ever you
Chose to come here alone. I’m like you
That way, and I know it. I squint in the dark,
Peering through the leaves for any other
Monster who might be a clue to me, who
Might be an actual me or you. The fountains
Are pretty at night, although I have to stir
Aside the day’s fallen leaves and feel
Around the bottom for the real. Unknown.
I know what that means. I can’t find home
By any amount of searching for treasures
In this museum of trees. I have to go without
Seeing the Angel identified, without finding
Any home among these pillars and statues
That pass for guardians and prizes, without
Knowing where the right exit might be,
Without being permitted to know. I won’t go.

Mutual Identification and Epistemic Solitude, 19 October 2017

“Not everybody became friends with everybody else. They began to develop that particular sense of belonging that is based on mutual identification. This was the real miracle: the children were rescued from their epistemic solitude.” ~Daniel Dor on the spontaneous development of a full sign language among deaf Nicaraguan children

I’ll set the immediate scene for you,
One last time, but, as always, sloppily.
A rickety bench leaned on a restored ruin:
White contrails above a black-red butterfly,
An empty birdhouse swaying on a pole
That also held up a solar-powered light
With a hypersensitive motion sensor,
Clicking on and off in the sunshine and wind.
A small, bent man sat alone on the bench.
If you share these names with me, then
You and I share many things. This is,
However, not my story. This is your story,
And I am never more than a guest in it.
Tornerai, si. But I’m not coming back.
I’m carrying the chains home. I don’t want
Any more miracles rescuing me from my
Epistemic solitude. You know what mutual
Identification means? We love each other,
You and I, us against the world, us against
Them. We’re a team. What’s going to work?
Teamwork! You see? Cooperation is murder.
Rescued by our longing to communicate
We begin to form cells, a re-enactment
Of the first bilipid layers to demarcate
Outer from inner phobias. We admit. We
Process. We use. We reject. We no longer
Enjoy our former epistemic solitude, no
Longer suffer from our unfulfilled desire
To share our experiences with one another
But not with the others. We are alive in a way
That is not one with our bodies being alive.
We are a many-headed beast, conversing.
Have you ever considered the affinity,
The longing for certain chain reactions
It took to get organisms up and running
In the first place? (Nick Lane has. Ask him.)
And now your longing for me or someone
Like me, or for someone as utterly unlike me
As you could imagine, my longing for you
Or someone like you, or for someone as
Utterly unlike you as I imagine, causes us,
Insofar as anything can be said to cause
Anything, to bud off into competing cells,
To war with those we do not love, those
Who do not love us. Oh, what am I saying?
These thin lines are like the threads that held
The giant Gulliver fast to the ground, but
These lines do not define the monstrous
Being they outline and barely, all together,
Manage to confine. I am that monster, terata.
I want to be held so tightly I can never move,
And I want to be alone so I can vanish
From this netting with which I contained me.
A human is a silkworm who can’t escape
The result without destroying it. That’s why
We’re so much more useful to each other
Once enough of us are boiled and unwound.
The sun has set. Let it set already, damn it.
No more sermons on who is really moving,
Who is truly moved. Crickets now and, truly,
Tonight, the rarity, noctilucence over mesas.

Circling the Drain, Zion, 18 October 2017

Anyone who uses antiquity to criticize
The present shall be executed. Anyone
Who thinks the present is superior
To antiquity shall be executed.
I am here! I am here! cried the man trapped
For six days under a manhole cover
In Houston after the hurricane. Anyone
Who uses antiquity to criticize the present
Shall be executed. Ma Ferguson personally
Saw to it that evolution was eliminated
From the Texas school books. Anyone
Who thinks the present is superior
To antiquity shall be executed. The museum
Is built to awe from the first moment visitors
Pass through forty-foot, two-and-a-half-ton
Bronze doors showing the text of Genesis 1
Backwards and in Latin. Anyone who thinks
They are superior shall be executed. Genetic
Evidence suggests a variant for light skin
Found in both Europeans and the San arose
Roughly nine hundred thousand years ago.
Anyone who uses antiquity shall be
Executed. Anyone, the story ends, anyone.

The Reservoir’s Tent Is Broken, 17 October 2017

Up there, the leaves were down. The fool
Who should have fallen, should’ve dropped
Like a burnt log or lumpen boulder, tumbling
Into the ravine that very afternoon, sat
Watching the fallen canopy crawl along
The ground, back and forth in every breeze,
Its colors now dulled to cream and brown.
Let us think about something other
Than ourselves advised one part of mind
To that part still scheming and self-soothing,
Rocking manically back and forth in the dark
Pockets of a bumpy skull. A fishing skiff,
A rowboat with a small outboard, actually,
Two men and four poles tilted at odd angles,
Floated past a scrim of newly barren aspens.
Murmuring male conversation drifted along
With the mutter of the motor. One could lose
An hour or two parsing the various levels
Of the artificial and the natural in that scene,
Once one accepted the human distinction
That whatever humans had done was art
And artificial, while whatever humans had
Left to its own prehuman patterns was real.
Better to have declared it all of a piece
With the world that generated all of it, fish
And engines, boulders, creeks, and concrete
Dams included. The boat floated around
A bend in the shoreline and the air was back
To a few urgently chirping birds and breezes
In the few remaining leaves. If I could go
To sleep with no more planning, not even
For sleep, no more effort, no more scheming
And dreaming, no more urge for explanation,
Thought the fool, if I could. What bravery,
Those who compel themselves to go
And do not wait to be compelled. A fly
Buzzed in sun beside a charcoaled hearth.
Small waves collapsed on the gravelly shore.
Proprioception and prepositional thinking
Are the enemies of sensible extinction.

Gods Against Monkeys, Zion, 16 October 2017

Life was mostly one long conversation
With the echoes of others' voices, the voices
Out of print, and myself. No one listening in,
Not to the substantial, extended things,
Just that internal back and forth, sometimes
Projected onto the screen and read back
Again. Possibly, that was ordinary, possibly
Just something uniquely wrong with me.
Who knows how much or how little anyone
Suffers? I was never good with the details,
The names of plants and animals, the vivid
Similes for the living and not living cogs
Of the world, the right names some stitched
Like exquisitely bespoke masks to things.
I paddled more in the weird concreteness
Of piled abstractions, the ways that words
Referring to nothing tactile became objects.
I understood Kumin’s useless angels better
Than her horses and goats, her old dentists
And weather reports, all helpful things. Once
I thought I knew how to be helpful myself.
I had, briefly, a benefactor and an idea
For him to benefact. He wanted to know
How to make greedy young corporate things
Straight out of top-flight business schools
Behave like ethical beings. I told him
I believed the correct analogy was aviation
And the discipline of flying by instruments.
Humans, I said, are no better fit for giant
Organizations than they are for clouds
And barrel-rolling jet planes. In the cockpit
We recognize that while some pilots may
Have keener eyesight, stronger stomachs,
More experienced instincts than others,
None has the neurology trustworthy enough
To prevent fatal mistakes. We train them
Ruthlessly to trust their instruments, not
What their inner ears may be whispering.
The same should be done for those climbing
The heights of multinational organizations.
We place entirely too much faith in character
To shape appropriate decision making. Sure,
Some individuals may have sturdier instincts
Than others, but no more trust a conscience
Than trust an ear. Give them the heuristics
And train them to listen only to them. He,
My benefactor, nodded, but he wasn’t
Listening to me, and why should he be?
I woke up in the dark of the next to the last
Likely night of my life having dreamed vividly
Of things no longer vivid or even existing
For me, including those days of sure beliefs.
At the lip of my own nonexistence I schemed
New ways of discovering lost things, plotted
Blue sky projects such as gathering the best
Of evolutionary anthropologists, geneticists,
Archaeologists, and the like to jointly hunt
Down the exact location of the last common
Population of earliest modern human beings,
The mother village of everyone living.
I dreamed, moonlit and sunlit, these sorts
Of silly, unachievable dreams, instead
Of dreaming about what I knew would be
The most terribly, vividly alive moment
Of final awareness for me, that moment
After which life would be done with me.
I was embarrassed, talking only to myself
And my out-of-print imaginary beings,
Each one of us our own prisoner and chains.
I knew that I should have died sooner, should
Have made preparations, should not have
Lived so selfishly, as if there were no
Tomorrow and there would keep on being no
Tomorrow every morning endlessly, no
Tomorrow ever at all without me. I knew,
And yet I kept on, shamelessly and dreaming,
Knowing that at the hour of my death, my
Daughter would begin to absorb me.

Dented Ordinariness, 15 October 2017

The man waiting for the last-second reprieve
Barely dared to breathe, much less check
To see. Instead, he retreated to reading
Reviews of movies, books, and theater,
An old obsession that some weeks took up
More easily dreamed hours than the reading
Of real books. A decade ago this weekend,
He’d read the phrase “dented ordinariness”
In a film review by Anthony Lane, and today
The phrase returned to him, fair description
Of what he was doing in living out his last
Weekend—breathing in dented ordinariness,
Reading of a new, “feral” Richard III bringing
“Oblivion upon himself,” thinking how little
Villainy oblivion really requires to descend
On anyone, and listening to the recording
Of Sibelius he had been listening to, those
Ten years earlier exactly, when he had read
That earlier review. As if the trembling wires
And tent stakes of memory could somehow
Anchor the inward mind so far back in time
That thoughts could swim upstream again.
The day was heartbreakingly crisp and lovely
With October light, not ordinary, no, no, no.
A portrait of ordinary: ordinary sun, ordinary
People in ordinary clothes, ordinary birds
In the shrubs, ordinary weekend activities
Delineated by one of Auden’s Old Masters.

Sanctuary, Utah, 14 October 2017

Half dead, body tried composing poems
Fast enough to keep ahead of decomposing
Thoughts and flesh. Tried, for instance, this:

Never Was, Never Will Be, Utah 14 October 2017

Strange to think to bring an end
To everything was this world
All I have to do

Is to maneuver
Over some basalt cobbles,
Stand up and lean back.

Yes, I expect everything
Does go on without me.
Yes, I’m a nothing.

But I don’t know anything
Beyond everything I know,
And that will all go.

And then, for another example, tried this:

A Disturbance in the Woods Near Coral
Dunes, Utah, 14 October 2017

It was just a metaphor.
It was the fault of Ramon
Y Cajal, his beautiful

Illustrations of nerve cells,
Trees seen without the forest.
Anyone who sees the trees
Is bound to get lost.

No one can reason
Without metaphor.
No one can reason without
A disturbance in the trees.

Blessed, raging synapses
Stained by dark Ramon,
How could you think of a world?

Or this:

A Little Beyond Completeness, Angel’s Rest, 14 October 2017

If the universe truly is exactly as it seems
To be, there is no reason to remain aware
Within its monstrosity. Myth, magic,
And religion are our acknowledgments
Of this. They all insist the universe is not
As it seems, has purpose. They insist this
Forcefully, so forcefully they will break you
If you resist. The universe, of course,
Will break you if they don’t. That’s just
The way this universe is. Don’t judge
The rebels it generated within itself
Too harshly for their desperate harshness.
They are fighting the fact of their birth.
At the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary,
In addition to the hospital, the bunny house,
The dogtown, the cat condos, the paddocks
For ponies, mud ponds for abandoned pigs,
High rooms of dead branches for parrots,
There is the most popular tourist stop of all,
The Angel’s Rest Cemetery. Thousands
Of windchimes, dozen of stone inscriptions,
Hundreds of actual nonhuman burials, all
Overlooking sweeping bluffs and mesas,
Combine to create a complete testament
To how grotesque and helplessly sweet
The species creating this for other species.
Death holds only opportunity for us, poor us.

Cane Beds, Arizona, 13 October 2017

What would pass for heaven for me, body
Wondered absentmindedly, thinking
Of Philip Pullman wanting to reclaim heaven
“From the wreck of religion.” All wrecks
Talk truer than the vessels they were before.
Off Antikythera a mechanism surfaced,
Then an outstretched arm, almost begging
To be restored. If religion were wreckage
It would be well worth salvaging, to be sure,
But for now it still floats, a dreadnaught
With battered gunwales, ceaselessly firing.
More than one such dreadnaught, of course,
An Armada circling one another, cannons
Thundering, decks on fire, sails smoking.
Maybe a salvageable heaven lies below
With the eels, the serpents and leviathans,
The beliefs already sunk. Crooked, swaying,
Body stood uncertainly in American desert
Beside a Joshua tree sufficiently similar
In shape to be a fetch, an inverted shadow,
And scanned the dry horizon for the bones
Of the ship of true faith, as if this could be
The Skeleton Coast and not itself the wreck,
From rim to rim, of a once-living inland sea.
If this were all, if all of this were allowed
To be without being taken from me, thought
Body to self, this would be enough, just this
Light and quiet, this could be heaven for me.

Turnout, Utah, 12 October 2017

I can’t explain why I played that game
Of Chicken against implacable adversaries
Going by gangster names like Odds, Change
And Chance. You can’t win at Chicken
Against a world that never blinks. You will die
Or you will blink and blink and blink and then
Die anyway. Maybe that last fact was why,
But neither can I explain why I fused
And blurred and generally made a mess
Of mixing up prose diaries, journal entries,
Semirandom amnesias, essays, and the lyric.
I did it. It was my way of doing it, a personal
Means to fail that I counted something
Of a success insofar as it wasn’t all typical
Of the ways we all failed and had to continue
To fail. A timid mind in a fragile body wanting
To dare the universe was bound to putter
Around tentatively and make a little mess
Where a great monster genius would have
Created an unholy testament to catastrophe.
Wait. Maybe. You think? Was I mad enough?
Could words heaped up to be tumbled have
Tilted over the lip of the abyss, disasterly?

Borderline Arizona, 11 October 2017

Body balanced on the exact line between
One state of a disintegrating being and one
State of being something else disintegrating,
Allowing awareness a moment to savor
The desert blue of the mindless sky, allowing
Mind the time to mutter, mutter silently that
The problem with a man on a wire is all he
Thinks about is being the man on the wire,
The wire, this step, the wire, this step, the
Wire. Present-moment mindfulness is
A bloody ungenerous thing, save for staying
Aloft when you are where you should never
Have gone, trying not to go where you will
Have to go eventually. You’re entranced, but
You’re boring. You’re alive, but you’re totally
Bizarre. And if you make it across this wire
Somehow, you will never live up to this fall
You avoided when you finally do have to fall.

Bactrian Camel Rock, Boulder, Utah, 10 October 2017

Hid like a mountain lion on a flat ledge
Over the duned trail. Ten years earlier
To the day, had passed through here
Full of hope and lonesomeness. Not here,
Not actually here, of course, but an echo.
The formation that looked like a camel
Loomed over a horse trailer full of llamas
Being readied as backcountry pack animals.
“What do you call a three-humped camel?”
Daughter’s friend asked her on the way
To school the next day, both of us back
In the quotidian, bathed and dressed
In clean clothes, autumn camping done.
“Pregnant!” Daughter answered in triumph,
Already knowing that joke. What do you call
Anything anymore? Time is a three-humped
Camel created by the committee for change,
Everlasting change. Back to that moment
On the ledge, the two-humped formation,
The llamas now loaded, the lonesomeness
Momentarily forgotten, the hope restored.
We are not done until we are not. Allow
As how the mountain lion hunts by ambush,
But don’t imagine calling it out by name.
The llamas ambled down the trail, grumbling.

Great Cottonwood, Gold Canyon, Utah, 9 October 2017

After a marvelously still moonlit night

On the mesa and an equally calm blue dawn,
The wind began to gather strength. Down
Under the great cottonwood in gold canyon,
Tan sand and yellow leaves spun, danced,
And stung. The countdown to inescapable
Calamity now numbered just a few days
If not hours. What life would be after life
Should be afterlife, life didn’t want to know.
Be brave. Over and over consider the climb
Down the uneven basalt steps to the ledge.
Visualize the moment of alignment, balance,
Reluctance. Remember the certain terror
Of body that will resist any abbreviation,
No matter how awful the cost of more time.
Straighten up carefully. Lean away. So said
Mind to awareness attempting to gain
A majority sufficient to overrule body
And obligation. Mind, that Iago of any life,
Any human life, always advising disaster.
Iago serves his author’s smooth, high brow,
The necessity to articulate cruelty in order
To approximate truth. Delirium set in as dust
Curled around life’s slumped shoulders
And clung to every blinking eyelash. Fall
Colors were nearly peaking, this fourth
Consecutive year, fifth autumn in ten,
Body had found itself at this shifting spot
On the map of Never Quite the Same
Canyon, cottonwood, rabbitbrush, creek.
Hardly here at any moment, hardly ever
Here at all. True when Iago first whispered it
Twenty-five years ago, true and true again.
Who would care to admit that the villain
Of understanding, while cruel, was not a liar?

Burr Trail, Utah, 8 October 2017

The draw hadn’t happened yet. The future,
Therefore, had not yet been extinguished.
It hung like a fire in the pale October air
Over the sandy mesa where daughter tried
Her hand at pounding the stakes of a tent.
I sat, a grunting bump on a literal log.
The fire of juniper twigs started happily.
A good draw from underneath the pyramid
Flaming up from the bottom of the hearth.
Other campers muttered, but only a couple
And not too damn close. To the east,
Emptiness. Purple to the north. A pallor
To the south, and to the west, death
Of the particular sunset. The glow faded.
It always came back to that, the end
That was never the end. The end that won’t
Be coming back won’t be, can’t be the end.
The draw hadn’t happened yet. The future,
Therefore, continued to burn, burn, burn,
And would be extinguished but not as such.

Last Ditch, Arizona, 7 October 2017

I was never certain whether it was the grim
Tenacity with which this universe enforced
Its every rule or the compulsive tendency
Of nearly every member of my species,
All ourselves products of those same rules,
To fantasize fractures in that unbending
Law that was weirder. Our human world
Reeled with tales about natural law broken,
And to state the obvious, that it never broke,
Risked being pinned down somewhere
On the spectrum running from accusations
Of pig-headedness to executions for heresy.
Every population had its tales of magic
And wonder, magic and wonder being
Always instantiated in some flouting
Of a well-known rule. Humans flew, beasts
Granted wishes, gravity was switched off
As easily as a flashlight, lead turned to gold,
The sun paused in the sky, people returned
From the dead, and other people never died.
I understood the urge but not the conviction.
I wanted to fight the world without requiring
Anything purely miraculous to happen to me.
I found the narrow seam, the shadowy ravine
Where the odds were staggeringly long
Against my wishes and me but not needing
Anything outside of the rules to occur for me
To beat them. And then, in that bent desert
Of twisted trees, I leaned over and fell in.

Narrow Garden, Utah, 6 October 2017

Who was he, really, the one who walked
In the garden in the evening time? I doubted
He was either that particular Jewish man
Or that particular Christian god, or any
Historical particular. He, it, was a rumor,
Old as gardens, or at least as old as gardens
Worth strolling in, which would be to say,
Not particularly old in the scheme of eons,
But a good many human generations
In the making. This rumor whispered
That if you walked alone in the garden
At a certain time of evening or, in some
Traditions, of morning when the dew
Was still on the roses, you could encounter
The stranger you always wanted and feared
And yet live to testify and send the rumor on.
I suspected it was that figure, ungendered,
Faceless, shadowy, but comforting, gently
Talkative enough to draw out your own
Griefs and confessions. The rumor was true
But impossible to confirm because of one
Error in transmission: you didn’t live.

Sand Wash, Snow Canyon, 5 October 2017

Pain and exhaustion had their own ways
Of interpreting a perfect day. They swayed
Together and stumbled, blinking like owls
And gasping like fish, like dancers at the end
Of a contest to find the couple that could
Hold up the longest. You’ve seen the picture.
More than the blue blown-glass sky above
The red cliffs, more than the scalloped
Patterning of sand in place of creek water,
More even than the incessantly pleasant,
Soft chatter of the little gray birds, they saw
The way the jogger stumbled, they heard
The way the fallen child bawled on the trail.
The world was perfect, admitted exhaustion
To pain, perfect without either of them,
But it was sarcasm born of irritation,
Their grandchild, if you like, that admission.
Pain replied that it was always when worst
And least able to take action that one most
Wanted to leave. The sun was ideally bright,
Just the angle to warm a chair set in sand
Without scorching the skin, and the air
Occupied itself with the small breezes
That ancient poets so loved to name,
And one could have, should have said
That these sweetnesses were mercies
Counterbalancing the heavy duo, but there
Could be no counterbalancing once, or while
Pain and exhaustion slunk in and sunk in.

Afterlife, Utah, 4 October 2017

Close to official midnight, shoulder
Too painful to lift an arm, ankle tweaked,
Internal organs lost in parley over who
Should surrender how much and which,
Body surrendered but sneakily kept on
Breathing, as if another morning woken
To and greeted were less than nothing,
Were simultaneously superior to the walk
Of the drunkard exaggerating everything,
And the emptiness of the certain
Who will brook no exceptions, by god,
The emptiness who will not, however, end
As you would wish your failure to end.

Aspens, Utah, 3 October 2017

Up in the high country, they were near
Or already past peak gold bouquets.
Nothing ever looked more suited
To an unyieldingly cloudless blue sky
Than vast aspen stands, gold and trembling.
I said, they have nothing to say. I said
It a thousand times, a hundred ways,
And still they had nothing to say.
Dumbfounded, I watched their shimmy,
Scatter, and sway. What if it was only me,
Invasive monkey, self-absorbed trickster,
Who had nothing really to say? They were
Busy, after all, trying to salvage the day.
Frost was right. It's reckless I must go away.

Courtyard, Zion, 2 October 2017

Denial grew as its excuses dwindled. A body
Staring disastrophe in the snake eyes, fangs
Already sunk up to their gums in its neck,
Thought, well, what if someone came along
And unhooked this snake from my veins,
I wonder what that would feel like. How
Should I go about stanching the blood, what
Should I do with my life once I'm healed?
All the while the fangs injected poison
And the eyes didn't blink. Every half instant
Inching toward oblivion was spent spinning
Increasingly elaborate and implausible
Futures to live after this crisis had passed.
A body could spot a small bird in the mouth
Of a rattler vanishing across the courtyard,
Could glimpse the beak still opened wide
And think, I shall compose a poem about
That poor bird, and nature, and beauty,
And the doors of perception, and eternity,
And eternal return, or at least arrange words
And images redolent of all such deep things,
Without thinking, why can't I shut my beak?

Doppelgänger, Utah, 1 October 2017

He didn't, in fact, look a bit like me, unless
You were the sort for whom all white men
Of a certain age looked like twins. Not tall
But taller, not young, but younger looking.
Not bearded at all but with the shadow
Of a beard as heavy as my own had been
Weighing down his boyish phiz. Not broken
But presumably breakable, my mirror image,
Situs inversus, his paws on my love, his eyes
Crinkled with the wry amusement of doubt,
Not as to his own entitlement but to his own
Ability to make good on what he'd been
Given, when all he'd really been given was
The opportunity to deliver me, my fetch,
Elongated echo cast at twilight, the last
Thing I would want and the first that might
Help me help me deliver me.