Thursday, March 28, 2024

Poor Tree Allegory

This tree’s so inconsistent.
It messes with perspective.
At night, it’s next to a lamp

That creates its own versions.
Maybe we’ll get back to those.
By day, well, it’s either green

And apparently growing,
Or gold, growing beautiful,
Or so bare lopped branches show.

And the weather! The weather
Intersects all the above,
Windy, rainy, sun-drenched trees

Of this tree, in all seasons,
Each with day and night versions.
It’s an epic catalog,

Poor tree, stuck in a lyric
With no real music to it,
Sighing, creaking, and rustling.

You don’t want to look at it,
But it was planted for you
Or with you, something like that.

It could come down any day.
In winter lamplight, after
A snow, it mimics a ghost.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Not What Is the System, Who?

Whenever there’s a picture
Of people somewhere public,
Gathered to make a statement

In support of a hero
Or in protest of crackdowns,
And they’re being arrested,

Study as much as you can
Of the faces of police,
Often physically obscured,

Carefully blank when exposed,
As if they’re playing poker,
Not cuffing a protester.

A police apparatus
Is the backbone of a state,
And the cells of that machine

Are breathing human bodies
Who wear the body armor,
Monitor the monitors,

Obey the orders, go home
Or to their barracks to sleep,
Eat, clean themselves. Tomorrow

Is another day, next week
Another paycheck, next month
Maybe a small promotion.

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Wood Shop

Sawdust, wood glue, varnish, turpentine,
Table saw, band saw, nail gun—the suite

Of the garage-cum-cabinet shop
Anchored the rhythms of the ranch house

Never intended to shelter work
That now kept the house from being sold

Out from under the children it held.
Built deep enough into third-growth woods

That the din remained an annoyance
No more unbearable than the planes

Flying from the recreational
Airport built over swampland next door,

The transgression of residential
Zoning laws had been half-forgiven.

Everyone knew about the children,
Adopted, disabled, most of them,

And the carpenter in his wheelchair
Who built cabinets to support them.

And somewhere in there was a fable
About strange roaring in the deep woods.

Monday, March 25, 2024

What Are You Doing Here?

The real deal crosses your path,
A truly black cat in sage
Wilderness down by the creek,

Not a cougar or bobcat
Or something vaguely cat-like.
A black domestic shorthair,

Medium-bodied, solid
Shadow, crosses, left to right,
And vanishes in the brush,

Miles from any residence,
Any trailer, cabin, house.
If the supernatural

Ever intended to send
A message via black cat,
This would have to be the one,

Unmistakable omen,
Where a black cat wouldn’t last a night
On coyote’s hungry ground.

Sunday, March 24, 2024

Where Does the Story Begin?

There’s a map of infinity on the wall,
Compressed and distorted to cover it all.

The landscape’s so jampacked with categories,
There are no boundaries to territories.

In fact, from a short distance, the map looks white,
A white gap, a blank expanse, glowing at night.

Get some darts. Throw one at infinity’s map.
It might bounce back or vanish without a gap,

But if it sticks, start with that. Begin from there
Where the story begins. There were storms in the air

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Literature

Ash and silence might be better
Than any arguments, but still

If you found a book carbonized
In old ash you’d crave translation.

Any writing becomes worthwhile
If fragments endure long enough—

Ritual prayers, divinations,
Palace accounts, sheep exchanges,

Even indecipherable
Languages, seals, rows of scratches.

Etch anything on anything
Likely to outlast your era,

Your corrupt civilization.
Your cri de couer may awe someone.

Friday, March 22, 2024

Grave

The tenderness with which people gather
Human remains, delicate reverence
Reserved not only for kin but strangers,

Even strangers whose remains are ancient,
Surfacing from grassed tombs, dunes, and black bogs,
Lies in striking contrast to the fury

With which people may dispose of remains,
Piled up, mutilated, as in the case
Of those ancients found in bogs, for instance.

Revere the dead, fear the dead, handle them
Gently or use them for fertilizer,
Jump scares, and mockery, it’s all the same,

At least in that the same species does this
And just that one species. Yours. You did this.