A Kind of Something

And then there’s the urge
To make a kind of something
Out of the nothing much
That flings itself your way.

If you could be maximally
Quiet along the way. Why
You would expect dying
To other than living, who knows?

Thirty Years Ago You Were Also Alive

Soon, the holograph
Will be the last
Resort of the facts

And the pen in the hand
The last ghostly jasmine
As a light breeze

Ruffles the air you recall
Driving home from a prison
You visited to teach a class.

The Soft Lives

The shadows are so long
They have lives of their own
And the life that was led

Seems tangled in the life
Its shadows are leaving,
As if tangled in the branches

And the language has grown
Simpler, simpler, the shadows velvet
The dark shadows comfort

On the Rim

There’s a small pile
You can arrange
Of dust while you wait death,

And making small islands
You’re never excavating
While clouds concentrate on the rim

Rim of the sky you rim and
There are sad coats out there
And columns of shadows,

Through lawns at evening,
The sun at last shining,
We can stay until we have to go.
Until we we have to go we can stay.

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 rare morning lightning. Take warning,
Death loves everyone, no matter
How you love life, no matter how strong.

When Do You Get to Stop Working on It?

We are survivors / of the Future,

Announced Michael McClure in a poem

More than half a century ago,

And you agree with him. The Future

Has been taking a blow-torch to you,

For as long as you can remember,

Sixty-plus years of fear and trembling

Takes a toll on any vehicle,

As prevailing winds sculpt a desert.

But you don’t care for the word, survive.

Endure might be better. There’s no word

In English, that sums up resistance

And surrender fused by the black hail

Of life’s relentless experience,

But the poets are working on it.

The Wandering Dream

Where the dream went, who knew?
A splash in the lap, mess
In the head? How to fit

The dream into the fizz
Of whatever this is
That won’t that much longer last?

Wriggle through dreams in the dirt?
You move, middle to middles,
Get in the car and wait to start.