So What Does This Tell You?

One bird in the meadow chorus
Has a call that sounds to me
Like, “wakey-wakey-wakey.”

The chorus is cacophonous
In a low-key, ear-friendly way.
The pulsing trills and cries, rising

Along with the background rush
Of unseen Handspan Creek, fresh
Grass scents, and the lush variations

On green shade, the elaborate interleaving
Of interdependent competitions, different
Strategies for spring, remind me

That my flesh has arrived by descent
From a long ancestry that proved content
To thrive in places like this. Like this.

My senses were born for this,
Although they didn’t know it yet,
And this doesn’t know it, or care, never will.

To know this. To know. Face in a pillow,
Color of the backbone of night,
Hours before dawn started in this meadow,

I woke thinking, Be these senses,
The fabric of being the only being
Who can be sensing these things. Like this.

But really. “Wakey-wakey-wakey”?
What am I thinking? I know the faint, fond
Ringing in my ears isn’t telling me anything.

A Figure in Which Secret Things Confide

Take no rooting interests in the day.
Be the beast who is this world and breathe,
As best you can, your experience.

There’s nothing heroic in being
A poet; there’s nothing essential
In being. You are as you happen.

From within what happens, you write things.
You find yourself doing things. You breathe,
As best you can, whispered secret things.

No Matter

To know where you are, get lost.
The cliché is not so cute,

If you place the emphasis
On you. You vs. the rest

Of the cues that readily
Suggest, when too familiar,

That they are you, when they’re not.
When you’re lost, you’ve brought you out,

Clear of that familiar crowd
Of your own geography,

And alone in the dark woods,
Lost in another language,

Confused on an empty steppe,
Shivering in a cold town,

You’re just the you you have left.
You in you. That’s where you are.

Why do so few follow this
Paradoxical advice?

It seems charming, doesn’t it?
Sapere aude, all that?

You know. Where you really are
Rarely proves anywhere nice.

Ground Truth Database

The hero shrew shows serious backbone
With its flattened and interlocking spine,

But, to grasp why, you need comparisons,
And comparisons are the foundation,

The backbone of knowledge, truth, and science.
They are, you might say, our ur-database,

The internal skeleton of culture,
Spongy, compressible, compactable,

Durable, but still breakable supports
Of what we like to label logical

Reasoning, central pillar of our world
And core technology of creation,

One of mind’s first prosthetic devices.
Step on a comparison, and you tread

On the back of a hero shrew of thought.
Don’t be surprised if it crawls off, uncracked.

My Micromorts

Nothing is essential, still,
Many things are typical—

Death has a costume closet
Of myriad surprises,

And delights in vanishing
Within bespoke disguises,

Each with novel requirements,
Typical risks and garments—

An accident, for instance,
Has to dress as happenstance—

A good infection requires
Densely woven connections,

Whether it’s dressed as passion
For demonic possessions

Or just another virus
Hacking tracks through the forests—

While war comes sharply cornered
In well-tailored metal suits.

Cute. There’s even a measure
Custom-made for Death’s tailor—

The micromort—bit of death—
By statistics professors.

I have my own micromorts,
Scraps of rags I patch and stitch

Loosely and haphazardly
Because I’m clumsy with thread

And lousy with narrative,
And only put two-and-two

Together when I have to—
I don’t trust either of them.

Death can have us when it wants,
Me and all my motley risks,

My craptacular guesses,
My gambles, my foolishness.

We’ll get tossed in the wardrobe,
Worn once, to moulder for good

With Death’s unmentionables—
Nonessentials. Typical.

Maybe You Know My Work?

Look, I’m a junkyard sculptor—
I’ll solder any old scrap

Of rusty, twisted metal
That catches my magpie eye,

Call it a composition,
And place it just so outside

So it can get rustier
And fuse into a figure

For something or another
After enough raw weather.

You’ve seen my work at crossroads
For logging trucks in scrub woods

Or in the half-dead corners
Of fast-fading mining towns—

A heap of tortured syntax,
Bent-hubcap monster faces—

The broken-bottle wind chimes—
The arms of rakes and mufflers—

Shadows in the sky at night—
Doors suspended in nothing

That dangle invitingly
From hooks I’ve learned how to hide.

Diligent Idleness

“Wild beasts dared to wander from forests by night and nested in the middle of Rome.”

We’ve seen this narrative before—

Wild beasts in an abandoned world.

It excites us, the romantic 

Aspect of our ruination.

It’s a weird and picturesque scene.

It’s not good, but it’s not the worst.

The worst will come later, after

We have celebrated the worst

Being over and behind us.

The worst is like that, tractable

To action, sometimes, but immune

To the narrative undertow

That sucks us in so easily.

Celebrate the indifferent

Evening more often, I suggest,

The day you made it home safely,

Despite the plague afoot, despite

The ominous car engine light

Forthcoming as a shooting star,

Despite your strangely racing pulse,

Despite whatever scares were yours

And yours alone that afternoon.

Another day of nothing much

Is neither grim nor turning point.

For tonight, be idle, be glad.

There’s a great horned owl on the roof

And a cougar prowling the roads.

Later it will get worse. After.