Tilting

Depending how much distance
Varies, inclination can
Mean more than proximity,

As on Earth, where the seasons,
The lengths of the days and nights,
Ignore perihelion

To chase their inclinations.
You can’t feel the sun grow near,
Just more or less. When your side’s

Tilted away, you grow cold.
Human affection also
Follows inclination more

Closely than it tracks distance—
Fact celebrated often
In all manner of love songs.

You have us to thank for this,
The airiness of gestures
And your spoken languages,

The enciphered persistence
Of scripts keeping messages
Encoded for centuries

And circling around the globe.
Language annihilated
Distance first, and staked the claims

Of absence. If you’re fonder
Of someone farther away
Right now than the one you’re with,

Remember this. Keep in mind,
However, that while Earth’s tilt
Remains largely regular,

Your coded messages grow
Weightier and weightier.
How much lurching can life take

Until no heart can weather
Impassioned suffocation,
Bitter cold hibernation?

Meaningful Angels

aere qui credas posse hanc cohiberier ullo 

It’s a good question,

But the religions—

Although mistaken

In their insistence 

That the soul will hold

Together, post skull,

Post bones—have a point,

Or at least a fact,

Deserving credit—

Souls come from the air,

From language in air,

And can hover there

Before and after 

Any living host.

If not immortal,

They are external,

Mostly very old,

And not dependent

On the flesh, except 

In the collective

Persistence of breath.

Souls are, after all,

Capable of flight

And long withdrawal 

To songs, caves, and books.

Souls are the angels

Of whom speaking spoke.

Surplus Likeness Generates Violent Change

Rain in a muddy ditch
Can be fascinating
To watch, an exercise

In how repetition
Gathers up into change,
The rings encircling rings

Made by the falling rain,
Each individual
Drop, each about the same

Shape, size, force on impact,
Creating a pattern
That seems almost static,

But every splash adding
To the floods on the way.

Long Day in a Cold Room

You know you could make them feel
At home, make them feel more real.
You know you could ask your ghosts,

What were you like when you lived?
What did you live for? What did
You like to eat? How did you

Want to live? How did you want
To end? Did you get your wish?
It’s not that ghosts will like this,

But ghosts are there to talk with,
Since most ghosts are ghosts of talk,
As are ghost tales, as is this.

The Rule of Three

There are always three names,
Two similars and one

Contrary, and if more
Then all must be reduced.

Business, too, is a game
With hazards, as is math,

Enchanting witchery,
And all must be reduced.

It’s what you do. You see
Your trichromatic world

And reduce it to threes,
Triskele, Trinity,

And tripod. The debate
Tends to what matters more,

The similar monads,
The binaries opposed.

They shift, of course. One, two
Make three. Three, two make one.

Then zero wanders in.
Nothing’s the same again.

Meaning Lies in the Desires of the Beholder

History is written for the winners
By the gamblers who are mostly losers
But ever hopeful of that one big score.

Every meteoric rise has a tail
Of artisans and courtiers tumbling
Away as they lose their delicate grips.

Some ride the bolide all the way to ground,
Temporarily brighter than the sun.
Some leave behind the signatures of life,

Very interesting, although the common
Collector just wants the meteorite,
The winning chunk, not its dense microtext.

Faith Is Easy—Religion’s Hard

Well, people absolutely
Will believe in miracles.
Most people want to believe

In miracles, and people
Invented miracles, and
All human societies

Are blotto with miracle
Stories and assorted tales
Of the supernatural.

Getting people to believe
In what has never happened,
In what will never happen,

Isn’t really hard at all.
If you’re a miracle tale
Launching a new religion,

Your problem isn’t people.
Believers are always there.
Your problem’s competition.

Unimaginable

How different would life be, if
Everyone had the same time
From birth to death, and knew it?

Mortality would still reign
As absolute as ever
But no longer capricious.

What sort of life would that be,
What sort of philosophies
Would it yield about meaning?

Would you be less fearful? More?
Could anyone imagine
Death as on Earth, all trap doors?