Nomos and Cosmos

Mushrooms resembling hens’ eggs,
Oval and brown, rose at dawn
From bright green, irrigated

Lawn, one late-autumn morning
In this southwestern desert,
As if a lazy parent

Had strewn them there for Easter
Without bothering to dye
Or to check the calendar.

Hill slopes wore shawls of scrub oaks,
Grey and brown with crispy leaves.
A pistol plocked in their woods.

Not a drop of rain for weeks.
I’ve done enough, someone thought.
Roaring dirt bikes sculpted dust.

If this were a proper book,
Handwritten, printed, or screened,
Carefully juxtaposed scenes

Would conjure coherent worlds
Through vivid contradictions,
Structured, balanced images,

But shapes and thoughts, like mushrooms,
Just appear in poems like these,
Spores for every passing breeze.

After seven days, Chaos
Died from being aerated
By his admirers. Really,

Thank you, but you’ve done enough.
It’s more and more of merely
Nearly the same digression,

Another interruption,
Another repetition
Representing the human

Condition. The rhetoric
Of experienced events
Is best left unexpressed—it’s

Mess, not synchronicity,
Much less mythic narrative,
Not scenes no one, being one,

Ever sees, the setting sun
As rising in another
Sea, simultaneously.