Place Says

1. From the Moon

I do have a point of view,
Yes, and a voice, and of course

My words are all borrowed, but
So are all of yours.

Mine speak for themselves;
Yours can speak for yours.

I have been drifting away
And turning away my face

Imperceptibly, to you,
From you before you were you,

But I still watch you, I do.
You’ve grown visible, not huge,

Smaller than you realize,
Still unmercifully wise.


2. In East Pavilion

A mistaken rhyme,
An ingenious poem
From a poet devoted
To borrowing lines,

To stealing flowers for albums
Of too many flowers
That, surplus, retained

Regret at being
Removed from context
And given new, unknown names,

Waited on the shadowed sill
Of the remotest window
Of the house inside that mind
Where all windows intertwined.


3. To the Unnamed Asterisms

In even those traditions
In which some divinity,
Spirited hero,
Or earliest ancestor
Gave all things names de novo,

The toponyms reported
Resolve to folktales, puns, or
Pseudo-etymologies.
Then, when settlers named new worlds,
They, too, drew on names they knew.

Think, muse, why so few invent
Raw words for a raw event.


4. In Western Mountains

A wave of wind waves the pines
And ten thousand airs reply,
The slightest whispers of which

Orchestrate a rushing whoosh
Brain waves translate from their whirl
Of waves through these inner ears.

Somewhere a human
Is doing something
Terrible to other lives,

Including other humans
Who may have done terrible
Things to other things themselves.

Here, rushing wind quiets us.
Quietism, quietus.


5. Then, Again

There are only waves.
There never was an atom,
Never one thing held in place.

Even a boat is a wave,
Albeit a different kind.
Difference makes it float.
When it syncs, it sinks.

And what are the differences
Of waves? Not what placement says.
Only context shapes the seiche.

The secret to change is pace.
There’s no raw term naming that,
No math yet for time’s collapse,
Black eclipsing habitats.