Go Light

Another gauntlet for the body,
Another unpleasant assignment.
Take a moment to appreciate

Being bathed in sunlight in advance.
Would you be more content if you had
No memories to warn you what’s next,

Or would you be more likely to die
From the shock when the gauntlet began?
The sun cups you as if it held you,

As in a way it does. Close as you are,
It’s the planet that grasps you tightly,
But you know the sun clasps the planet,

So, you’re falling for the furnace, too.
Time to do what you can’t forgive you.

The Unlocked Drawer

Most secrets aren’t except due
To the accident of not
Being something repeated.

The majority lie there,
Untold, without injunction
Not to tell. They’re the good ones—

Or, they include the good ones,
The best, statistically,
Since they outnumber the kept—

So many things that to know
Might change the world, that are known
Like seeds in barren ground, like

Data in the collapsed dust
Of torched palace libraries,
Like small fields of expertise

In the minds of marginal
Brilliant thinkers, Mendel’s peas
For instance—The true occult

Sits behind the door ajar,
In the loose specimen drawer
Since no one’s ever looked there

Who could infer what they saw.
Those are the secrets deserve
The name, the unprotected.

The Sameless

The sun sculpts in dust,
Winged beings being
Coaxed out of sameness,
The secret of waves.

There is no sameness,
Truly, just enough
Similarity
That the infinite

Can be introduced
Through the countable—
The most worn-down flecks,
The most burnished lives,

They all look the same,
So that counting breaks
In the uplifted
Eyes of an angel

The sun carved of light.
No, it didn’t mean
To make the nameless
The impossible.