Adela, Slocanada, 31 May 2018

A fortnight passed in the polyhedron of light.
The land partners are slowly pulling apart.
These phrases trace the edges of waves
That go deeper into humanity and the trees
Than words can ever follow, so forgive us
If our outline seems pathetically sketchy.
There were buildings and gardens by the creek
In the woods overlooking the lake where we
Stayed as fortunate guests of the partners.
But then again, the revolution was always
In the phrases (“back to the land”) and only
Touched upon behaviors (a lot of gardening,
Yes, but also the usual human squabbling).
It never inhered in the deep abyss of waves
That are all the actions and buildings, the land
Itself, the planet figured by the phrases of those
Who wanted to love her as a sacred mother.
“Sacred mother” is a powerful phrase, but what
Does it mean that meaning and power have to do
With phrases? Generosity let us stay here,
But even “generosity” is a light like those seen
Through these tall, uncurtained windows at night.
It was never the stars that exerted the faint pull
On our lives, but our phrases and stories
About stars, our sidereal goals such as generosity
And loving the land like Earth was a nurturing
Super human. The land partnership is falling
Apart. The faith and the hope lie in our words.
The fault lies in our hearts. Nothing lies in the stars.

Nakusp Hot Springs, British Columbia, 30 May 2018

Two dozen silver heads, one small child,
Make a constellation of the steaming pools.
All afternoon, the sun sews a cloud. A leg,
Prosthetic of course, rests at one end of a pool.
A pair of aluminum crutches have been propped
Up at the other. Come to think of it, all of it,
The carefully maintained pools, hot and hotter,
The changing rooms, snack shop, campground,
Parking lot, road winding up through the mountains,
Knowledge of the spring’s existence, modes
Of transportation and information, rules
For appropriate behavior, eschewing diving,
Even the semicircle of hummingbird feeders,
All prosthetics, props, and supports for what
Amounts to a floating, blurred tranquility.
The spring itself has nothing to do with us.

Small Weather, Slocanada, 29 May 2018

Merry May will soon give way to June monsoon,
But for now there are only clouds gathering,
A bit of a drop in the temperature, breezes.
There are hypotheses about why people talk
About the weather so much. One holds it
Gives us a shared experience and a neutral topic
Allowing strangers and enemies to converse
A bit. Or, it could just be that despite everything
We’ve invented to protect ourselves from it,
Clothes, shelters, hearths, culverts, levees,
And forecasts, it still affects us, still steers us,
Occasionally still loots, impoverishes, and kills us.
Weather can hurt. A little nervousness is in order,
If not, perhaps, so much chattering palaver.
On a steep slope looking out over the lake
Toward the wilderness, the voices of children
Float through the trees as the afternoon darkens.

Bigelow Bay, Slocanada, 28 May 2018

The bald eagle circled low over the waves
Pounding a carpet of pine pollen onto shore.
Two middle school boys, fat and sleek as seals,
Barked and cavorted in the cold rollers, ducking
Under, ducking the rolling driftwood logs.
The young-leaved birches flashed silver.
A hundred or so meters out from the high
Shoreline encroaching on hiking trails, the gold
And green water in the sun looked the same,
Near as memory could manage to match it
As it ever had. All the prior swims and days
Range the changes on the waves. What makes
This latest suite of memories unique? The same
That makes every slice of experience unique,
Whether of a sweet saturation such as this,
Bold outdoor colors and pleasurable exertion,
Or of a banal and senseless nothing much:
Nothing that is was ever anything but itself.

Summit Lake, British Columbia, 27 May 2018

The dragonfly larva waddled over the grass,
Black and awkward out of water, shadow
Of the bejeweled leonine beauty it would become
If it survived this stranding far from comfort.
What is it you want from these lines? What
Would make you content to peruse and reread us?
Daughter scooped up the wanderer and
Scrutinized it in her hand. She took it to the water
And watched it swim and ground itself again.
A little tap dance? A little rhyme? Earthy language?
High-flown rhetoric? Something more experimental?
Are we mad enough? Will we ever cut it, break
This shell, split these seams, unfurl our wings?
Daughter finds a recently shed exoskeletal ghost.
Daughter gets a water bottle from the car.
She wants to raise the larva. We try to tell her
In our rambling lines, if the marvelous insect
In its ugly carapace is removed from its needs
Beside this pond, the wanderer will surely die.

Winlaw, British Columbia, 26 May 2018

A woman asked a man, both strangers, if
His daughter attended Winlaw Elementary.
She was contemplating enrolling her daughter,
Who appeared to be about the same age.
The body language and sociality of greeting
Were not wholly unique to human apes, but
Consider the remarkable information exchange
In the query and reply. No, we’re summer residents.
It’s probably possible to parse this slight slip
Of conversation entirely in terms of the needs
Of the individual animals communicating,
But why bother? As anxious as the mother
Might be to find out about the local school
Or find a friend for her daughter, as much
As the father might think it would be good
For his own daughter to strike a friendship,
Almost all the business is transacted in the puffs
Of breath and among the laboriously installed
Systems of memory for the same language.
The words are really talking to each other
As populations of frogs hop between ponds.

Shoreline, Slocan, 25 May 2018

The water’s been rising all month, as it will
When the snows and spring rains are sinking.
Some years more, some years less. This year,
More. A heavy winter, a warm May. The shore
Now is the rock-lined footpath that will be
One or two humans high above the beach
Come August. Daughter and father sun off
On the rocks of the path after a cold swim.
This is a good thing. Dogs and hikers amble by,
Surprised to share their wooded trail with swimmers.
“We’re like mermaids,” says daughter.
“That’s what I’ve always thought,” says father
Swinging his painful, nearly useless legs,
Back into the indifferently merciful water.

The Planting of the Annuals, Slocanada, 24 May 2018

After the ribbon-cutting ceremony at Snk-mip,
Celebrating the restoration of lost wetlands,
After the first couple of real swims of the year
In the stunningly benign mirror of the Slocan,
Or “Shlu-keen,” the “spear fishing” lake,
After the drive back up to Red Mountain,
The house was quiet, except for the creek
And occasional gusts of wind. Flats and flats
Of hothouse flowers littered the ground, ready
To become rampantly colorful beds in the dark
Woods, this summer’s one-summer-only garden.

Apple Tree Cafe, Slocanada, 23 May 2018

Discussion goes to the dog. Does he bite?
One woman insists yes. He bared his teeth.
One man insists no, that dog will never bite.
They take it outside, to where the dog waits,
Wriggling on a bench in front of the cafe.
The argument is settled, for the moment,
In favor of the man apparently. It’s a love-in
On the bench, wagging and petting galore.
Inside, it’s too dark to read. The cafe owner
Has drawn all the blinds against the afternoon.
Two men are going over the right steps
For cleaning the cylinders on an antique car.
Daughter nibbles on a cookie in the shadows.
“Take the car apart, right down to the nitty,
And then fix it all the way up. That’s the way
To do it. Keep it all stock. Make it worth it.
A classic is for style and comfort, not for speed.”
They’re going to close soon. The dog is gone.

Lucerne Garden Patch, Slocanada, 22 May 2018

Children decorated the underside of the hexagonal
Gazebo with colorful ceramic moons and stars
They made themselves. Children attend
The fruit, herb, and vegetable garden,
Under the tutelage of local adults. Children
Play at the picnic tables in the shade, under
The shining ice field of Valhalla Wilderness.
It would be hard to overstate the charm.
On a sunny, active afternoon, children seem
Abundant here, as they are over-abundant
In so much of the world, but actually
They’re becoming perilously sparse.
In the cool hallways between the classrooms
Hang pictures of graduating classes, twenty,
Forty, sixty years ago. The oldest classes
Were the largest. It feels peculiar that in this
Loveliest of places, despite long winters,
The human species increasing globally
As entropy should be locally decreasing.
What will happen to this village when
The children fade? Remember the changes
Already made. People arrived here late.
For a few thousand years, they appeared
To have lived quietly by the lake, until the last
Generations were decimated. Then miners,
Thousands of them, the raking fingertips
Of the international industrial extraction machine.
Then all those mostly young men scattered.
Hardscrabble logging and a little farming.
Then the internees and religious dissenters
That swelled the ranks of those class photos
From the middle of the last century. Later,
A wave of hippies, back-to-earthers, various
Dreamers and draft dodgers, all now elderly.
There was never anything reasonable
About change in this approximate paradise.
You will not survive to see what’s truly next.

Sandon, Slocanada, 21 May 2018

It’s said that the ghost of a little girl haunts
The museum’s basement stairs. Daughter
Was a bit spooked herself the first time
I took her down there to see the recreation
Of the miners’ lives in the silver mines.
Mannequins still give her the jumps, especially
Mannequins in shadow. She was mistaken
For a ghost herself once, far from here,
Near Death Valley, at the age of three.
That, too, was at a former miners’ hotel,
Although one still run as a hotel as well
As a peculiar museum. The girl ghost there
Was said to haunt the columned portico
At dusk. Daughter came running down
Through the columns right at dusk, when
No one else was checked in but us, and scared
The bejeesus out of the janitor who looked up.
Here there’s hardly five buildings left standing
Of a boomtown that once crammed thousands.
The creek in which the silver was first found
Rips through rockfall and bare foundations.
It’s a fact that ghosts thrive in the absence
Of good record keeping, and most stories
Bear more resemblance to each other than
To any historical personage claimed to once
Have been them, but why a girl ghost here?
Scarcely any families ever here at all, and if
One checks the surviving graves, so to speak,
In the mossy, over-wooded cemetery, it’s all
A crowd of young men’s names, with a few
Middle-aged miners thrown in. If anyone
Would be expected to haunt this memorial,
You’d think it’d be the ghost of some young man,
Crushed by a slide, dead of disease, murdered
In a petty dispute. Plenty of candidates, then.
But a girl? People are just more spooked
By the plaintive, pathetic ghosts of children.
Still, on one other visit, daughter pointed
To one of the poorly focused archival photos,
A scene of the chaotic Main Street now a stream,
Circa the turn of the twentieth century, and
Asked, “Who is she, Papa?” Sure enough,
To the side of the muddy, horse-filled street
Of false front banks, saloons, and hotels,
Lined with hordes of dark-clothed men in caps
And hats, beards and mustaches, and beneath
The heavy hanging clusters of telegraph wires,
One girl in a white frock with a large white bow
On her dark hair looked toward the camera
From her perch on the rickety boardwalk.
Maybe one has to be singular to get to be a ghost.

Centennial Park, Slocanada, 20 May 2018

The villages celebrate May Days with pancakes
Served in Bosun Hall, soap-box derby races
Down Main Street, a bocce ball tournament, beer,
And sumo-suit matches for the adults, sack
Races, wheelbarrow races, three-legged
Races, a water-balloon toss, a treasure hunt,
Sand sculptures, and a bouncy castle for the kids.
Perfect weather for it, this year, just enough
Clouds and breezes, warmth and sun. Soon,
All five floats of the village parade will rumble
From Bosun Hall to Centennial Park, accompanied
By bagpipes. The snow is off Goat Mountain.
People are putting in gardens. One old wolf
Biologist refuses to waste time at the park
On such a perfect day for gardening. There is
A huge stone scoop carved out of the mountain
By what once must have been a formidable
Glacier, as even today the peak above it wears
A cap of lacy but summerlong ice. No humans,
No pancakes, no bocce, no bouncy, no parades
Around in those maximally glacial days. Such
A perfect day for gardening, might as well
Say to hell with that gardening and celebrate.

Kaslo, British Columbia, 19 May 2018

Lumberjacks and lumberjills roll the logs
And chop the stumps. Kiwi man MCs.
A clown in the guise of a drunken idiot
Shimmies up the tall tree pole and pretends
To drop all his climbing gear by accident,
Then does a headstand and falls backward
Off the top of the tree, saved miraculously
By the hidden zip line attached to his back.
In the whole afternoon of contests, the only
Minor injury, despite the axes, chainsaws,
Double-buck fiddles, chokers, and logs
Rolling underfoot is to an eight year-old
Boy who just defeated a middle-aged man
In the log roll, only to hurt his hand jumping
From the log. He cries and is led away.
A local woman wins the axe throw. A Floridian
College student wins the tree pole climb.
“We’ve got no elevation where I come from.
I started climbing trees just to get higher.”
A seventy-nine year old French Canadian
And his weedy grandson finish respectably
In the double-buck crosscut competition.
The man from New Zealand tosses free caps
Into the crowd while donation buckets go round.
These details are not a story, do not need
To be coerced into a story, are precious because
They are not a story, although the anecdotes
Already dance like biting flies above each
Contestant’s sweating head. Memory acquires
The narrative it seems to require like maturing
Forests acquire their understory shadows.

Garden Graces, Slocanada, 18 May 2018

First day back in town. Everything old
Is new again. Everything new, or some of it,
Is aired in light conversation, then folded
Away, now part of the old. What happened
During the long winter, the eight months
Out of contact. Those for whom changing
Is largely a matter of fits and starts in aging
Assess each other. The whole, of course,
Is fresh as it ever was, the old then gone,
The children then the young adults now,
Everyone slid over another space along
The row. No dramatic changes this year
To the trees or the lake. A long winter.
An ordinary spring so far. Deej and Gary
Sing harmonies and play guitar and ukulele
In front of the Garden Graces gift shop
In the gently green-grey afternoon.
They’re celebrating a decade since the shop
First opened. A couple months later, the first
Time you arrived, you had no idea the shop
Was new. It could have been there forever,
As much of the fabric of town as it is now.
Back then, Deej had a sign in the window,
“Runes and a Tune for a Twonie!” She sang
You a song and predicted your future, more
Or less. This is that future, not that it ever was.

Post Falls, Idaho, 17 May 2018

The strip mall lately built decays across the street
From the hard-used, quickly decaying inn.
Not enough maintenance. All of life’s extended
Phenotypes acquire the stages of life. If not
Assiduously maintained, the beaver dam,
The bowerbird’s bower, the colony, the hive,
Like the bodies that built and repaired them
While building and repairing themselves,
Crumble artlessly way, awaiting ubi sunt
Poets to cascade mourning over them. Here,
I don’t care where they are now, the teams
That used to keep this stucco crisp, this paint
Repainted, these dark carpets from curling.
There is one last effort sallying forth at the mall,
A sallow couple dressed in heavy flesh
Who have reopened the corner coffee shop
As a hash-slinging diner they’ve named
“The Cabin.” They have taped over the tears
In the benches. They serve omelettes all day.
There’s not another store front open down
The entire crumbling front of brave ambition.
Across the way, the inn still does brisk trade
Heading steadily downmarket with the bargains
Offered on the web. Desuetude indicates
Obsolescence, lack of use, but if there were
A better word, it would mean failing maintenance.

Billingsley Creek Lodge, Idaho, 16 May 2018

The heretic of space, place, and identicality
Has been so long in love with similarity. When
You can’t have the divine, you settle for reality.
The past has changed again. New owners
On the Heraclitan creek. “No, we moved in
Three years ago, almost, we never knew them.”
What? Never knew the previous owners,
The three pleased and proud old widow witches
Who pooled their savings to rescue and restore
These fishing cabins of Vardis Fisher and Ernest
Fucking Hemingway? Who lovingly created
Kitsch themes for every cabin—sailor, cowboy,
Pilgrim? Who drove once a month to Jackpot,
Nevada, to play the slots and blackjack together?
Who became a twosome and then a lonesome
As change had its way with them? How could even
The memory of the last surviving owner’s
Banana-yellow Subaru, which she kept immaculate
For fifteen or twenty years, always parked
In front of the cabins when she was in,
Fail to have been mentioned to the new team?
The new owner, of retirement age herself
From the looks of it, shakes her head again.
“Nope. Nobody’s ever mentioned a yellow car.”
I can remember when, on a Mother’s Day,
The then two surviving owners had a party
With both their families sprawling by the stream
Athwart the paying customers like me,
And it was something you’d have thought
Had escaped Breughel’s, or at least Williams’s
Kermess. Somewhere, I assume, surviving children
And grandchildren still remember these women,
Even if the place they gallantly bought together
And remade as a going concern, has erased them.
Daughter and I were down at the stream into twilight
Last night, talking over the rapids, playing,
Her chasing frogs and practicing handstands.
Swallows and herons sketched the skies.
Perpetual ghosts of mere similarity haunted.

Thunderstorm, Salt Lake City, 15 May 2018

There’s daughter lying flat on the lawn, exactly
As one is never supposed to do, pleased
With her innovation using the lush, springy grass,
“Look! I’m making rain angels,” she announces
Gleefully as she bounces up to show me
Her temporary indentation, a pale shadow
Quickly filling back in as the blades recover
And cloud-to-cloud lightning arcs overhead.
The complicated minor narrative of other lives
And ideas that culminates, for this moment,
In the personality that is me does not scream.
Instead, with one eye on the beauty of the lightning,
Half a mind struck with fear for daughter, half
Not wanting to obliterate her delight, I say,
“Now that’s a cool invention. Yes, I see. Now
Why don’t you join me on the porch to watch
The storm? I’ll tell you some crazy things,
Like how lightning jumps from the ground
To the sky and why.” As if there ever were a why.

Sun, Salt Lake City, 14 May 2018

How daring is it to admit illness but not quit,

Not come clean about every bit of risk? Men,

Studies show, die sooner in part for going later

To the doctor. Over large numbers, I’m sure

That’s true enough. But the doctors don’t

Always rescue you, and sometimes, besides

Bankrupting you, they speed you on your way.

Other than the Golden Rule, there’s no principle

More ubiquitous, more ridiculous, than

The Hippocratic Oath. First, do no harm?

One can’t possibly succeed at healing long

If one always starts by taking zero risk

Of doing harm. That approach would mandate,

If anyone actually followed it, doing nothing,

Not intervening in any way at all. I am, then,

Said body, delirious with fever, the only true

Doctor to myself. By admitting weakness

But not seeking anyone to bring an end to it

I have fulfilled the promise. First, I do no harm.

Rain, Salt Lake City, 13 May 2018

When the weather moves inside, the body
Cares less and less for the general situation.
A tempest in a teacup matters more
To the teacup than a tempest outside the door.
Tasseomancy fails when the leaves won’t stop
Swirling, so even within the future-obsessed
Beast that calls itself human, the future vanishes
Into the tempest’s murky whirl. Consider
All the ways you’ve thought you wanted to live
And all the ways it might be not so bad to die.
Once the storm’s inside you, you accept you
Won’t be one of those who gets to decide.
The rain clogs all your drains and gutters
And suddenly you care no more than a cliff
How soon or how hard you begin your slide.

Hot Wind, Arizona, 12 May 2018

Blew dust through the parking lot. Except
That it was already unusually hot, even
For the Arizona strip, there was nothing,
Nothing remarkable about the scene. So,
Here it is, sit with it. A red plastic chair
Outside the door to a golfing concession.
A handful of overweight, elderly Americans
Who were quick to exchange pleasantries
Shuffled from golf carts to dusty shelves
Freighted with tchotchkes and scratch-off
Lottery tickets. The palm trees beyond
Any thought at all tossed and drooped
In the gusts. Hedges and lawns waited
The next watering. Nothing, like the dust,
But finer, infinitely finer, filtered into everything.
Anywhere’s the center of an infinite universe.
There was no good reason to mention this.

Just Before the Cold Front, Utah, 11 May 2018

The wind has died. The body aches so badly,
A lesser body would have cried. No one
Actually knows why we, this species, these
Medium-sized bodies, are the only ones
To cry. Not whimper, mind you, not cry out,
Which a great many animals do, rendingly,
Not simply emote, but bawl, tears and all.
Hoping that the pain this time is no more
Than a passing virus or the low front settling
In the many half-healed bones, the body
Passes the time wondering, did archaic
Humans cry? Neanderthals, Denisovans,
Ghost populations known to us only by genetic
Signatures, if at all—How many generations
Gone, how taxonomically broad has the weeping
Innovation been? Did the little hobbits on Flores
Cry? Did Lucy? Sediba? Any of them?
Who was that first ape, big-brained or only
Bipedal, who sat and wept? It’s a signal
To the others of us, is the best I can guess.
The evening star is out now and the spring
Is still mild. Tomorrrow the hard weather, but
For now the body expects to make it through
The night. Unexpected heroism, terrible loss,
Those are worth actual welling eyes. Pain,
Enemy of the soul, never deserves a good cry.

Cloudy Evening, Utah, 10 May 2018

I’m not surprised that many monastic zen poets
Were ambivalent about their poetry habits,
Wondering, sometimes in verse, whether verse
Was problematic, a distraction from any satori.
The zen mind doesn’t go in for ruminating,
And it’s hard to compose without ruminating.
We’re all grateful, regardless of tradition,
If, one evening, we have a mossy, tranquil mind,
And a frog jumps in. We’re all grateful
When the subconscious and/or the divine,
The background cultural radiation, delivers us
A few effortless lines. But mostly, even when
We fool around with collage and found phrases,
We bury ourselves to the ears in rumination.
There is nothing enlightened or enlightening
About poetry composition. The pond is not
The croaking frog, and the jar that bottles
Lightning can’t itself be spun from lightning.

Far Removed From Arches, Utah, 9 May 2018

Experiments by engineers suggest arches,

Natural arches, form from fins as follows:
Whenever stone erodes a little more from
The center of the long sides of the fin than
From either end, the weight of the overlying
Rock is redistributed towards the thicker
Stone at the ends of the fin. This then
Compresses the stone at the ends more
Than the stone in the center, making
The latter more prone to weathering.
That begins a feed-forward process
In which the burden steadily falls
On the ends, compacting them,
While the thinner center rock
Erodes more and more quickly,
Relatively speaking, that is,
Until there is an alcove, and
After long enough, an arch.
Eventually, the arch falls,
Leaving pillars
That erode
To nothing.
Everything
About change,
Time and memory
(Symptoms of change),
Works analogously. Change
Wears some phenomena faster,
Making others more precious. We
Cling to stories, keepsakes, photographs,
But the erosion of the rest around them
Distorts the past, creates new pasts, new
And more delicate shapes. Then those, too,
Collapse, fins and arches irrecoverable,
Except, there’s always something left, new
Made, less lovely perhaps, but something
Our sources and distortions left, the start
Of the next that will erode into prominence
In its own trajectory, become beautiful as art,

And then collapse. Not an arrow, time. An arch.

Dittography and Haplography Are Twins, 8 May 2018

There is a defect in me. I shall not draw near.
Jaksaa, hygge, lagom, sisu, kalsarikännit,
Alright already, thank you, are we done yet?
It’s not ok to ignore gravity. It’s not ok.

Harum and saru’a. No one knows
The honest etymology of deformity.
Only sinister lamentations were heard.
A text that skips a beat, a text that adds a limp

Are the only ways evolution proceeds,
That carved us with the tool of mistake.
The poem then concluded atypically
For editorial reasons obscure to us.

Periaqueductal Gray, 7 May 2018

The scenarios you will imagine
Are reliably more predictable
Than anything that actually happens,

Although some of what actually happens,
Daylight, moonlight, minor accidents, pain,
Is pretty damn predictable as well.

Everything’s continually arriving,
Yet you never seem to see it coming,
The where-when of each particular ache.

In your imagination, disasters
And boring long-shot good things dominate.
What actually happens is just the breaks.

Astrometry, 6 May 2018

In all of that longing and violence,
Human lives and deaths proceeded swiftly,
Never pausing, despite all our longing,
For any return on eternity.

The conscious being of the book became
The reader who longed to be the writer
Longing for a reader who longed to be
The book. There were wavelengths to measure this.

Tonight Earth’s moon and Mars appeared like kin
In the nearest sky, which they were, so why
Did we care to determine the distance
To and between the farthest shouts of light?

It’s not as if we’re going to visit them.
The books the humans wrote were murmuring
Exactly these sorts of things against them,
Never pausing, despite all their longing,

Verbatim.

Vanity Books and Framed Photos, Cinco de Mayo, 2018

There’s a years-old, half-empty bottle of tequila
On a kitchen counter next to the sink, left
There, actually, by someone unaware
Of the holiday. She was cleaning out
Cupboards, ahead of the sale of her house.
Boxes, filled or empty, littered the floors
Around the half-full, half-emptied shelves.
Soon someone else will live here, soon, before
The next holiday knocking at the door. Under
The desultory ceiling fan of continuous differences,
The paintings and pictures still hang. What
You can say about such a careful arrangement
In the process of being removed and boxed
Is that it’s like extreme slow-motion footage
Of a beetle folding away its papery, origami
Wings back beneath the glossy shine. Things
That mean, that say “this is how she or he
Meant to be seen, wanted to be,” these are
The human equivalent of giant eye-spot wings
Signaling, for a while, “I was bigger than just me,
I opened up into the world and ascended
Into the air as I pleased. Look at my artful
Disposition of these, my co-created things.”
Tomorrow or next week, the house will be
Empty, the walls freshly glossy. She’ll leave
Behind the tequila, deciding to hide it, discreetly,
Whimsically, for the new owners to find it.
She tells me the last owners left it behind
For and her husband to discover, which they did,
But each separately, each becoming suspicious
Of the other’s secret drinking, watching
And checking the level of the tequila for months
Before realizing, with hilarity, it didn’t belong
To either of them. So now, she’ll sow the pearl
Of possible suspicions for the next couple,
Although perhaps this time whoever finds it
Will only either discard it or drink it, without
Wonder, as all who form no stories are without
Wonder or suspicion, sober or drunk, and are free.

Bright Courtyard, 4 May 2018

What an amazing prediction. I was right;
We were right: the day spun back again.
Now this sunlight on skin predicts the night
Is about to gather shadows and begin again.
You know, as don’t we all, it’s obstruction,
That’s all, eclipse, the most ordinary sight,
That marvels us not in the slightest, that’s been
The thin wedge all our lives between us and light
That would burn us with unmerciful delight
If we didn’t create distance with our bit of sin,
Wickedness, the healthy deliverer of frights,
The garden’s flaming sword that keeps us in.

Black Window, 3 May 2018

Every day the planet spins, I find myself
Returning to the thought that every turn
Takes a little bit longer, relative to other
Measures, than the last day, so that even
This smoothest, most reliable-seeming motion
Is slowly changing its rate of change. The top
On the wooden table, the Foucault pendulum
In the planetarium, every stable orbit, every
Stable attractor will wobble into chaos. So
Much is so similar but nothing is essentially
Unchanged. I like to know what I know
I’ll never be able to feel for myself. These words
That pretend to speak for me, as me, who
Speak for themselves and the languages
Beyond, before and aft of me, form a part
Of that knowledge. What I can feel, without
Them or through them, alike, is that I am
No longer watching the sun or the rain
But sitting with my furniture and my screens,
Beside the window black enough to mirror.
Soon enough, slowing spin notwithstanding,
Whether or not I sleep, more sun and rain.
No wonder some Sufis sought divinity in spins.

Homeostasis, 2 May 2018

At Sandby Borg ring fort on Öland Island,
Life went on without historians for centuries.
Some things got better. Other things worse.
Sometimes, more things seemed to be
Getting better and life felt promising.
Sometimes, more things seemed to be
Getting worse and life felt threatening.
One day, we don’t know exactly when,
Some men came, we don’t know who.
They separated all the women and girls.
They sequestered all the weapons. Then,
They killed all of the males: men, boys, infants.
They smashed their skulls, crushed their chests.
One old man fell into a hearth and burned
Either after or as he died. An adolescent
Fell backward over a man already dead.
One boy lived a little while, lying on his side.
In one house alone, nine bodies strewn.
We don’t know in what order these things
Were accomplished, but after the killing,
The killers left. Other than the weapons
And the women, they seem to have taken
Nothing. No one returned to burn or bury
The dead. Sandby Borg rotted quietly, abandoned,
Awaiting the excavations of archaeologists.
Meanwhile, a millennium on in Peru, on a cliff
Overlooking the ocean, in the land of the Chimú,
Well over a hundred children, two hundred
Llamas, and at least a couple of grown women
Were ritually slaughtered, the llamas strangled
With ropes, the children cut open at the chest,
Probably to get at, then pull out, their hearts.
The two women had their heads smashed in,
And all were interred together on the cliff
Just outside of history. Evidence suggests
This was done during a drought. Some things
Get better, others worse. Sometimes, more
Things seem to be getting better than are getting
Worse, and life feels promising. Sometimes,
More things seem to be getting worse,
And life feels threatening. One day.

Side Street, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1 May 2018

The parasympathetic nervous system warms
Like a lizard in the sun. Time to be calm,
Digest the view. Rain and spring snow cleared
The dusty, dirty air. Now that warmth has returned,
The clouds have a little while to be picturesque
Above the peaky roofs, the sky a little time
To display wavelengths classically pale blue.
Children's voices emerge outdoors, blossoms
And leaves shine impossibly brightened.
Body knows, deep in healed and broken bones,
That this is an incorrigible world, that pleasure
Comes as reward, mostly, for doing the things
Body’s ancestors tended successfully to do.
Life has never negotiated a lasting truce.
But this is a truce. There are magical machines
One’s great-great grandparents would have been
Frightened to see, having never imagined.
There are sounds from backbeats to passing jets
To the determined chirping of continuous things.
Don’t bet on the jets or the machines. Bet
On the living things. Of course, that’s the thing.
Can you tell at what point we machines, we
Technologies like language and poetry
And self-propelling metal engines, cross
That imperceptible stream, minuscule Rubicon,
That wanders the line between living and mere
Being? Consult your contented lizard innards,
Life forever subject to failures and rewards.