Desperately Seeking Bony Lady, 1 November 2017

An unfathomable ocean of atoms separated
His gaze from the nearest glowing peak
At sunset. What chance had he to sway that sea?
He remained very much the study of a man
Who’d left the world of getting and spending
But never fully joined the forest of fairy tales.
The music of the north, the forever north,
Visited him. “Our lady of the holy death, come
For me, comfort me, provide for my survivors
And sole descendant. There are cedars
And their cousins in the canyons that belong
To no one. I mean to become an end among them.
Watch over my bones and bring them home.
I surrender them in the hope of fortune
For the soul that was more than me, other
Than me, the souls of those surviving me.”
He thought, in the lamplit moonlight, I’m not
Praying rightly. The forest remains too thin.
I want the cedars giant, young, and closing in,
On the coppery canyon walls another sunset.

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.