Exit 0, Monida, Montana, 7 August 2018

He stopped in at several small towns, but
All the inns were full. Monida had no inn. No
People either. Only ghosts like shacks, names,
And numbers. This time, he didn’t stop. But
He should have asked the ghosts. We would
Have told him that he had never stopped. Not
In Dillon, not in Dell, not in Lima, not atop
Any of the many, many continental divides,
Not even in Idaho Falls where he’d fallen
Years before on another trip searching
For a place to stop, not even when he found
Himself sitting on a balcony on a warm night
At last with a bed on which to lay his restless
Head, facing, of all things, a white, glowing
Mormon temple with its golden Moroni on it
Blowing that horn straight at his balcony,
Just as the Moroni of Salt Lake used to blow
His horn straight at the traveller’s own bedroom
Window, all those years ago. This is not
To deny these are personal details, of interest
Only to egos, angels, gods, and ghosts, and not
Something a reader should have to scratch
A head to understand. But look, whispers
Monida, north of temples, ruined exit zero,
Look. We pass and pass. There is no place.

Last Swim, Slocanada, 6 August 2018

The lake lay low. And lower. The heads
Of rocks reemerging at the surface,
From a distance, looked like ducks.
The shoreline had become a good part
Of the bay. The giant driftwood logs of May
Were grounded darlings until winter storms.
The swimmer scrutinized the motion dazzle
Of the sunset on the close-to-calm, a breeze
That riffled the still just enough to scatter
The golden light like diamonds, like diamonds
Made of gold, but briefer, better, truer pledges
Of love for a world that only knew love
As changes, as pledges of more to come.

Silverton Day Park, Slocanada, 5 August 2018

The ants appeared unusually frantic,
Wrinkling time around their entrance
In the gravelly grass above the stony beach.
A motorboat cut a bit too close to shore,
But otherwise, the slightly wrinkled lake
Was quiet. The only reason you think an odd,
Intense, or frightening event took longer,
Slowing down time is because you were
More attentive, more neuronally engaged,
Not because you could slow down events
Or react any faster. Your brain estimates
Duration based on how much attention
You paid. The swimmer tried to pay more
Attention to these last, high summer days
At the lake, but the ants were no less frantic
And the crows refused to slow their cawing.
So long memory wove its own wrinkles,
More comfortingly. The similarities of this
Day to hundreds of previous visits to swim
In the sun, snugged tightly together
In bunches, bundling the fabric of change
So that it all seemed almost one, and that
One almost unchanging. The swimmer stood
Up and wandered back into the waves.

Kaslo, British Columbia, Festival Weekend, 4 August 2018

Ah well, another day, I heard one woman say.
It was the Festval’s second, middle day. Who
Knows what people mean when they shrug
That way? They could be of the “it goes on”
Type, or maybe of the “it is what it is” type.
In any case, a day combines, any day, both
The proof of continuation, as in “here we still
Are, yet another day,” and the greater proof
Of change, as every day, no matter how
Familiar feeling, no matter how similar, is
Never actually the same as, never yesterday.
Which was it she felt more when she sighed?
The fact we can feel a bit of both is why we
Count the days. Another band got up to play.

One Universe Within Slocanada, 3 August 2018

The conundrum the cosmologist could not
Seem to grasp was that even absolute
Perfection, whether of God or wavefunction,
Could change, could attain more than one
Kind of absolute perfection. The reasoning
That something perfect was constrained
To be beyond time and therefore changeless
Was baseless. Time was not the whole
Of change: it was a category of change,
Periodic, cyclical, slow, that life, including,
Eventually, humans and human cultures,
Seized on as useful for winning more living,
For coordination, for competition. Cultures
Made time a technology, many technologies,
But those technologies were neither
Nonexistent nor eternal, nor externally actual
Except as used by the human technologists.
Time in math and physics was time as math.
If it dropped out of an equation, however
Mysterious and esoteric it was, very well,
It dropped out then. The cosmos went on
Changing. This was mysterious to the mystic
Cosmologist, furrowing his brow at his math.
The ancient philosophers must have been
Correct, he muttered. Time did not exist;
It was an illusion of confused humans cut
Off from goodness or God or perfection,
Humans therefore suffering. You had to
Hand it to a species so gifted at taking credit
And assigning blame for everything, first,
As an evolved survival strategy, a social skill,
But ultimately extending it to the most basic
Nonhuman features of their human, humble,
Circumscribed experiences, even if it meant
Reasoning their way to blaming themselves.
That must be the key, thought the cosmologist,
If someone were to observe timeless but
Entangled halves of a cosmos, observation
Alone would ensure people were being born
And dying. Eureka. The universe becomes
Alive! Alright, maybe, said one external god
To the cosmologist, if you want it that way.
But forgive me if I keep changing outside
Of your microcosmos where you pretend
To be measuring your dream of a timeless
Essence of me. My little friend, you are
The ground state in which you embed
Your dreams of a universal consciousness
That is forever and calm, to which you can,
By choosing to do something, say meditating
Silently for days at a time, hah, as it were,
For instance, return. You are the suffering
And the joy, but you cannot change things
To keep things from changing. You cannot
Create the unchanging, however complex
Your math, however intense your dreams.
The cosmologist feared losing motivation.

Or on a Distant Journey, Slocanada, 2 August 2018

Running into ger in the Tanakh, it occurred

To the swimmer that when T.S. Eliot, scion

Of Boston Brahmins, raised in St. Louis, later

Styled himself a metoikos, Greek for ger,

Someone never at home really, anywhere,

He wasn’t only indulging in self pity, he was

Inventing a kind of excuse, an excuse

The swimmer knew. To abide is to tent, is to

Dwell, but if even forty years of encampment 

In the same wilderness can be claimed 

A mere sojourn for the unnameable ruler

Of everything, then a few decades here or

There, a change of nation states, means

Nothing, really, no responsibility. The swimmer

Surveyed the lake, glowering peacefully in

The hazy sun between summer thunderstorms,

After a good, long swim. Home is where, when

You feel like ger, you still have to take it in.

One Corner of a Small House, Slocanada, 1 August 2018

Some days, even the Lord of Hosts could do
No better, some say, than dictate Leviticus
To priestly scribes. It seems not every divine
Utterance produces prophecies or psalms.
So who is a mere compositor fond of a swim
To try to be more consistent with his praise?
By afternoon the storms came out to play.
That meant the swimmer should not today.
In one corner of a small house he waited
As form constants and Turing patterns lit
A sky filled with rain and the random firing
Of internal background noise, internal
To the brain of God. Ah, see? As it strikes
And candles a conifer high on one ridge
Above the fluttering waves of the lake, it hits
You, too, you’ve thought more than once
Of the mind of God, but never of God’s
Brain. Why not? The swimmer bereft of safe
Swimming this hour will let you answer that
For yourself in your own brain. This is, after
All, his Leviticus, or perhaps his Numbers,
Obsessed with counting and observing
Cultic practices of a small tribe of chosen
Phrases. If you complain we make no sense
In whatever damnable world you inhabit,
We’re happy to proclaim you a heretic. See?
This is the primary feature of a system
Of belief: an activator and an inhibitor
Fighting against each other. Noise plays
A pivotal role. The thunder performs its part.
The higher brain becomes more excited.
There is at least, among the priestly writers,
A technology to deal with original impurity.
There is at least, among the neurons, wiring
That inhibits hallucinatory patterns. There is
At least, on an afternoon of storms and no
Swimming, an invisible but dangerous force,
The holiness its Leviticus ascribes to lakes.