Quiet Pocket, Nevada, 7 February 2019

This place doesn’t really exist, but neither
Do we, and it’s a nice place, in any case, a wedding
Veil of snow-cloud draped fetchingly across
Its mouth in the wintry desert sun, yesterday
Afternoon, a few flakes swirling all the way
Down before vanishing on contact, like souls.
It's cold, cold for where it is, cold for nonexistence,
But we are, too. We are considering philosophy.
We are considering mentalese and mind theory.
We learn about the mind by talking about the mind.
We learn about dreams by talking about dreams.
We learn about death by talking about death.
We should talk about things less. We confess,
We’re the cloud, the frozen vapor, the specks
That melt on contact, the words in conversation,
The memory of the sun and snow, the metaphor
Of the wedding veil, the claims to nonexistence,
The name of this text, the names of all of this. We
Are all of this, except your breath. What next?

After the Reservoir, 6 February 2019

Every fresh distinction is itself an afterlife.
Nothing much changes. We float quietly
Over the growing town or settle comfortably
Down by the side of an almost always empty
Country road. We are grateful for the quiet,
For the comfort, for the emptiness. Nothing
Much. Such a gorgeous oxymoron, meaning
Everything, everything but nothing at all.
Don’t mock a limited perspective. The small
Beast who steps out of the vehicle and nods
At the solitary morning, noting the silent line
Of cliff sandstone cutting out an empty sky,
Experiences nothing much more than a trick
Of constrained perspective, but the skyline
Conjured by the beast’s transience and tiny
Slice of life shapes an exquisite blue gesture.
If death is nothing and life itself is nothing
Much, thus everything, this afterlife we’ve been
Experiencing a while is nothing much besides.

Concatenated Utah Midnight, 5 February 2019

Benjamin, martyr to dust and morphine, wrote

“Ideas are to objects as constellations are 

To stars." Adorno did not seem to agree. So?

Neither do we. Ideas are never to objects,

And constellations have nothing to do with stars.

We should not make this argument. We should

Not rub the paddle against the gunwale for fear

Of disturbing the silliness of all cathedrals.

We remember our lakes in the woods, our stars,

Our dust in the suburban houses we left behind.

We had never been wild, not human beings.

We had cottages sprinkled around in our thoughts. 

You could sleep in our words, take meals 

At our farmhouses. That’s just what the world 

Looked like five minutes before we climbed 

Into it to die. Aspens and ice, but then we survived.

The Giant’s Mind Confined to Introspection, 4 February 2019

We are tiny subsets of phenomena
That the cosmos generated, through which
It now begs, interrogates, and chatters
Sadly, happily, to itself. I’m inclined to wonder
If it’s not even lonelier, for all that. Speechless,
It speaks through us, who demand answers
Of its speechlessness that isn’t us, that as yet
Has no answer isn’t us. And so, it has to listen
As we make up gods and interlocutors that are
Not, not the quiet cosmos that can’t answer us.

Tapeta, Starlit Mesa, 3 February 2019

These letters provide no material for the storyteller
To work with. Confusion and uncertainty
Seem to be the rule, upon reflection.
The data suggest a dark energy density
Increasing with time. There goes the cosmological
Constant, back in the drawer with the old
Mustache comb. How is this happening?
How does this keep happening? We have
Only intermittent tapeta backing our retinas,
We are predators unique among spiders and cats
In that respect. The eyes of all the rest glow
In any light at night or not. Sometimes we do,
Sometimes we do not. Sometimes we perceive
The shifting waves, the gathering in the dark.
Sometimes we lose our vision, sleep a constant
Background, doze in our equations, return
To our ur myth of eternity. And then, the mysterious
Letters reappear, and when we peer, when we
Try to focus on them, our vision deepens, blurs,
And our wonderfully sensitive new retinas glow
As the darkness accelerates toward us, as we
Accelerate toward the darkness, torches of night.

Inholding Mansion in Zion, 2 February 2019

The greatest poets were myths of poets,
Names attached to verses that, if composed
By mortal bodies with those names, were never,
By them, written down or, if written down by them,
Survive only in much later copies written down
Long after those bodies died. They waver,
Those ghostly poets, those ghost writers,
Authors of the nonexistent nations
Back of the many premodern traditions,
Behind the hagiographic scrims of lives
And explications, looking slightly mournful,
Faintly wise. Even their names, sometimes,
Are only notnames, and I would rather, without
Naming myself, not be the bearer of the name,
The famed, immortal poet’s name who did not
Compose all or most of those poems, but be
The remaining poems alone, the phrases I composited,
Composite of all the poems passed through me.

Inscribed by Taibai at Kolob Terrace on the First Day of February, 2019

Words raise up mountains
Streaming out ribbons of verse.

The mountains are high.
Their pressure immense,

But the smallest streams
Carve and carve away.

The canyons are long.
A thousand poems and essays,

A thousand works of art
Make up only a small part.

Only a racing painter,
A blinding poet,

A serenely arrogant,
Confident-gestured

Calligrapher can keep up,
Catch at the grandeur,

Capture the whole sweep,
Get to the bottom of this.