Happy in the Trees, for Instance

A tiny animal,
Some kind of pallid moth,
Haunts the available

Wood walk of a sunny
Day in the desert where
You look up from your trail,

Wherever you are
Waltzing around with calm.
What it is you’ve just left,

Whatever it is lifts
You from waves of the lakes
To whatever flutters,

And ask yourself why trucks
Sound happy in the trees.

Problems in Dying

Are ordinary problems
In living another day.

From chores to conversations
With someone known for deep thoughts

Who has ideas but maybe
Not the faintest clue about

The chores—someone who suggests
The end of democracy

May lurk among skulls and bones
Piled at the mouth of the cave

Accumulating thousands
Of years, heaped generations

For further information—
Pointing out democracy

Had a beginning, surely
It has to come to an end,

In which some other system
That offers a solution, strange

To you now, not production
Per se, means of production,

Any of that sort of general
Descendant from the game where shots

Could delete the emergence
Of a truly new system,

Before any system awareness
Could liberate real awareness,

If such a thing existed,
Better than 2024.

Sixes

A beast that funnels deep
Through evening may look furred
In charm but know nothing

Of the run where strange life
Gets done. Life continues,
And living gets it done,

And in the small evening,
It’s the small thing that knows,
Teeth, and fur, and trembling,

And whatever spots ghosts
As vividly as notes
From the throat of the mouse

Floating up from the throat
Of the mouse who wants grace
For a short hour of life

Deserves explication
Out of the eyes of gods
And the dreams of humans.

Don’t Worry About the Data, Only What You Made It Mean

How do you write a poem when
You can’t remember your name?
Like a vanishing version

Of an old, familiar scene,
Like angels slipping away
From themselves for no reason

Like whatever the world wrote
Into libraries of lost
Information about leaves,

DNA, shivering sheets
Of family history,
Information’s vanishing,

Being replaced by meaning
As it had to be, since leaves
Are the awful immortals,

Those only wonders truly
Bound to come and go, data
Fooling you along the road—

The data hiding somewhere,
In the permanence
Of information, along with

Black holes, every secret file,
Each scrap of information
Rescued from the burning pile,

The conservation of force,
The memory of the face,
Of the best-beloved god,

Who can’t recall the meaning
That went along with the name
The information you thought

You could lose, proved resilient
As information will do,
As force and matter will, too.

The Discovery

Phone I’m just trying to call,
As if if were there that easy,
As if poetry were owls,

As if baby poems were owls,
Tasked with their own egg-laying.
Sunny day in December,

Likely as not to produce
Something hideous, the task
Carefully summarized so,

Instead of monstrosity,
That the species of owl eggs
Tend to generate over

And over again in books
And images, we may make
For ourselves the kinds of grace

We would be happy to find,
Simple words in woods at night,
Or in the shade at evening

And recite, I found a small
Poem last night, and not be wrong
About the discovery.

Could Have Been

The peace could have been
A matter of fact
Lonely afternoon

With green streams smoothly
Surfacing, shadows
Facing the twilight,

And a kind of calm
Ready for night hours
Tagging alongside—

It went the hard way,
Past what could have been
Kind straight through wicked

To a liquidation
Of the placid risk
Were red blood in this drawings.

Gifts for the Dead Guy

What to give a wiseacre
Who has a natural gift
For infinite sleep? Really,

The night gathers strange numbers,
Counting those you could count
Under any other wing—

Any other wing you might
Spot flying—geese at twilight—
Eager to get warmer soon,

Eager to move from image
To metaphor, metaphor
To something metaphorish,

Metaphorish to someone
Warm and real, a poem tonight
That might work for what you

Need to feel, you wiseacre,
Wiseacre enough to feel.

Claire’s Caplet

The shadows move swiftly across the
Evening’s lawn and meadows, eager
To embrace, covering the distance in
A few steps and then done.
You’re unwilling to be the reader
Of earth’s bonds between scavengers
And the engineers.

Usually, It Doesn’t Last Long

One conviction for those deemed terminal
Holds that, however you spend your
Last months, you hang on to all of them,

Every moment. There’s no sense allowed
That maybe the terminal are blessed
To not have to choose to keep living.

The grass and scrub carry coats of frost
This cold, clear morning. Nobody climbs
Uphill from here; the skies so cleared 

By raw morning splendor. Take warning.
Death loves you as much anyone,

Whether you hang on to breath or not.

Sabots, a Pair of Attitudes

Even if this is flailing
Along, it’s something--it’s
Something to avoid, to track--

The pale, worn smile of the horse
Gradually, but more like shoes—more
Shoe is just an attitude.

Bethlehem, Again

This is not the poem

The good poet

With precise lines would 

Have written about

Winter, good poets,

 

Other good poets,

Nature, poetic 

Structure, the deep need

For other poets,

To build the right lines--

 

It's the sorcerer's

Apprentice among

Slop buckets spilling

Over the verge of loss,

Defeat in the eye

 

Of the deer who died

At the roadside, all

It's bones broken clean

Before its eyes sank

Into the stupor

 

It couldn't control,

But oh well, you wrote

Something, and you asked

Permission to be

Sung on the cold, bright air.

Minor Strategy Two, Less Confused

Can you string the small worlds

Through the small targets?

Can you can get get some space for this

That’s not part of the flower,

Doesn’t need help with itself?

Can’t you pity its small Strategy?

Words Watching While

The rain fell, fell
Persistently,
And the words would

Watch from windows,
Wondering.
There’s too much world,

Down to the cats
Held too often
In the lap’s lap.

Neighbor’s neighbor
Preaches a peace,
While mere neighbors

Preach a greater
Something, something
Points an arrow.

Wait, there’s still too
Much here, something
Needs to go, gone.

You could go, but
You’re not quite these
Words, no not quite.

Birthday Party Game Time

There goes another wren,
Good for nothing much but
Another wren, and all day you’ve tried

To get to that previously missing wrens,
And it’s five o’clock and you’re no wren,
A coach without a sure game time,

But getting close to inevitable. Soon
The little bird that hops by will have to
Be an invitation, and the name soon.

Minor Strategy

Can you string the small worlds

Through the small targets?

Can you can get get some space for this

That’s not part of the flower,

Doesn’t need help with itself?

Can’t you pity its small Strategy?

And Nothing Much Else

The light to the left is clear.
So is the light to the right.
Sometimes people ask themselves,

What’s the worst that can happen?
Nothing much keeps happening.
And there’s that sense nothing will,

The sense that keeps it going.
Once in a while, someone gets
Something suddenly very bad,

And can feel the hanging on,
As by fingernails, but most times,
The left and the right are clear.

Any Ending’s a Failure to Communicate

Either we’re all there, or we
All fail to coordinate.
You can find a distraction

To help with anxiety
Whispers someone at the back
Who rarely shows up on time,

Every day’s a small drama,
Trying to weave through the world,
And then, like that, forgotten,

Everything in the drama—
While some days are sad and large
Dramas stranded and struggling

By the wayside, but it’s true,
We’re either there or we’re gone.

The Stare

So you say to yourself, it will all work out,
And you draw the circles fiercely for
The zeros and ohs. And it will; of course,

Until it doesn’t, until it completely fails
And then carries on from there, since
That’s it, isn’t it? The dangerous

And the threatening, you survive for now,
As anyway, that stuff’s all you, all local.
What rocks are about to slide all over you?

You know the others that break loose
Are almost bound to roll over someone,
But there are so many more someones

Than rocks on the loose. So you say
To yourself, it will all work out, and you
Draw circles fiercely for zeros and nose.

Yes, Thomas?

The strange physicality
Of language keeps increasing,
The words crinkling in the hands

As if they, too, were paper,
Or a type of cellophane,
See-through language in boxes,

As boxes, small constructions
That aren’t really words at all—
A falsity to language

At the physical level,
Some other substance, pretense.
A slight shadow at the door.

You’re grateful for that shadow!
It alerts you words watch you
As they fade into the snow.

The Librarian’s Nightmare

One person does something about it,
This thing that’s harrowing all of them—
Attempts to carefully excavate

The tide—not turn it, actually,
Not send the waves all scurrying home,
But climb out of the pit made for it,

By it, where nothing but suburban
Parking lot inhabited the world
Only minutes ago. In horror

Stories, it’s the unmentionable
Mentioned over and over again
That always counts as the horror show.

Horror’s just what reverses itself
To return quietly to its shelf.

If You Don’t Go, You’ll Never Recall

Quick pushed, sure, yesterday was
What any day is, and pushed
A bit more, more boring, but

Then you recall the two hours
Of misty, gusty rainfall,
Dark house, early candlight

That at the time was magic,
A morning to remember,
Already ready to go.

Apostrophe to a Library Shelf

People might study you if they knew
You were suffused by calm contentment,
A contentment that could be transferred.

If you preached and had a following,
If you had a following, if you
Never preached and had no following

But had a reputation—human
Constellations, all of those scenes.
Maybe even if you were only

Human, without a reputation
For remarkably calm contentment,
Someone might find you out for study,

Since the discovery would amount
To something remarkable people
Quest for and discuss around the world—

The wholly contented, calm human,
A hazy miracle—but you’re surface,
With words impressed or inked upon you,

Paper and brick, glass and bits—no one
Is surprised by a calm library.
No miracle there. But folks visit.

Sonnet on the Edge of a Knife

There they are, the houses—
How she’d managed to get
First, a deathbed confession,

Second, pro-tips, post-mortem,
For transmitting messages,
To the living, who really

Don’t often try to listen,
Was beyond him. He listened.
He had good tips, but his own

Twitching ears, rotating,
Snagged him, reinforcing him.
He was not a good actor—

He was good at listening
For the knife’s edge, glistening.

Door in the Floor

There are also oddities,
Your birthday plan, for instance,
To get a new toy around

The holidays, bury it
In the dead of winter then,
And let it bloom in the spring.

The idea is to forget
Intentionally, instead
Of struggling to remember.

You just need to find the hoard
Of your artificial self,
You can cast off and call dead.

You’ll get what you want at last,
Escape from this troubling task.

Get Under It

There was one rock,
Size of a house,
Perched on a slope,

The kind of rock
That would dare you,
Anybody,

To stand beneath,
Get beneath it.
Could slide

Any minute.
Could rest for years
Or centuries.

You watched that one,
Thinking the whole
Time, What a fool.

Someday, the rock
Would move, must move,
Hasn’t at all.

Look Here's Another Hour

You recall the airy flavor
Of an old day, one from childhood,

When you glance out now at porch chairs,
At return of relentless light,

The colors bleached to full-spectrum,
Somehow all-white light. Give you time.

Give you space to sit and take it
In, a roller of a line raced

Ahead of the rest of the text,
One roller that never makes it

All the way to dissolve on shore.
If everything tomorrow were

Removed from its thoughts, from the mind,
And the day grew open-ended,

Endlessly more open-ended,
And your thoughts only grew with light.

I Know This Joy

You can’t recall
If she meant it,
With or without

Implied put-down.
The dishes clinked,
And the cosmos

Grew another
Six hours meantime,
Other events—

No piece of which
Can quite go, now,
And still, it grows,

Now candlelight
In a warm room,
The flickering

On your eyelids,
By which you see
You know this joy.

You Were, You Were

Jesus, your heart flopped ever
And lay still, made of of nothing
Except loneliness — What can

You do with doors adjacent
To each gift of collections?
Are these hills out? Are these doors?

Is this even loneliness—
Ok, the cats are free to linger.
It must be something,

Must hit something
And miss most things
And maybe that not-quite it.

Pain Med

Sorrow, well, you should have sorrow.
Supposedly, you’re dying soon—
But supposedly has been months,
Much of which you’ve been contented

And happy as you’re sorrowful
Now. And pain, well, you should have pain,
But the drugs increasing sorrow
Seem increasingly nonchalant

About decreasing pain. Upstairs,
The pets are sad, locked in a room.
The dishes overfill the sink.
Daughter slept over at a friend’s.

Hale and hearty young men’s voices
Echo around the parking lot,
Discussing this morning’s bike ride
As they fiddle with equipment.

Then they’re off. The sun shines. One dog
Starts a local bark. A cockroach
Struggles on the porch to return
Upright, and you wheel back inside.

Once Upon a Time There Were Only Living Ghosts (To an Adolescent on a Sleepover)

Sitting cross-legged on a grass hillock
High up on a mountain mesa meadow,

The ghosts of long-ago autumn weather
Wander around in living memories.

There’s nothing to memories but living.
They all rise, crest, reform inside your skull,

Every last memory of yours, alive,
Waves of memory being all you are,

At least that you can remember.
So it’s all living memories, all waves,

But all the waves are also haunting you,
We say, inhabiting your skulls like ghosts.

Ghosts as waves as ghosts and all memories.
There. There’s your bedtime fairytale. Night night.