Too Close Together, Or Maybe Too Far Apart

Un train peut en cacher un autre.
As with trains, so too with hours and days.
You could be crushed by the well-hidden

If you do not pay sharp attention.
The past often turns out to have been
Something you hadn’t imagined there,

And then there it is, like that, your past,
Irrevocable as ever was,
Only somewhat more unfortunate.

Memory has to be primed with signs
To protect the imagination,
Darling, foolish toddler, only child.

Forewarned, you carefully cross the tracks
Of another rushing afternoon,
Clutching the tiny, indifferent

Hand of your fantastical offspring.
Alright, it’s safe to cross here, let’s go.
Never let go of that grip, never.

The Roots of the Fog

Are good to contemplate
In devastating sun
You can only absorb

Sitting sideways, face out,
Torso turned halfway in.
Not even clouds today.

Imagine a small wisp
Slipping into this blue,
A colonist’s recon—

It extends a tendril,
A pallid pseudopod
To touch a peak. Glides on.

The fog there’s just begun.
It niggles a taproot
Into the peak’s thin soil.

That root proceeds, unseen,
Down through the green canyons.
Weeks later, one morning,

A bit of fog blossoms,
Or will. You know it will.
It will spread. It will cling

To the cottonwood trees
Near the end of gold leaves.
The fog will obscure them.

Then you’ll turn to no one
And say, I want to be
Like a cottonwood tree—

Right before my mind goes
Completely, when it’s shed
Half of its memories,

For it to reach that shape,
One architectural,
Colorful afternoon,

Of its greatest beauty.
And then I want the fog
To cloak what falls from me.

Now Stay Right There

There’s a tent-revival problem,
A coming down off the mountain,

Leaving enlightenment behind,
Reentering the world of dust.

You have to go back to the well—
Another retreat, another

Revival, another workshop,
Long hike, pilgrimage, cure, affair.

It feels like the burning question
Is how to bring the holy home,

Spread elevation through all hours,
Levitate the whole awareness.

And when that fails again, it feels
Like the sacred has been cheapened,

Leaving by dawn. But it was real.
Transcendence is conditional.

Amuse-bouche

You’d think you wouldn’t have to get
Away from people to compose
Texts, which are language, about them.

Language and text are people things,
Emerging from community,
Often as not collectively.

Why does so much writing begin
In escaping or ignoring
Or being ignored by others?

It’s just it’s such a selfish thing,
Writing. Language gets so hungry
To have the writers to itself.

The Body’s Such a Subtle Mouse When Self’s a Wounded Lion

Understandably,

Decades can exhaust

Your patience for this

Mess of hauling bones

And flesh out of beds

To get back in them.

If you can’t live on

For love of living,

Live on like the mouse

Who slyly bargained

With that wroth lion

Whose rest it had wrecked,

My life is little

Worth, my death is less.

Long After You Don’t Need Us Anymore

The fresnel lenses
Inside words’ eyes aren’t
Just there to save you,

Aren’t just flashing thoughts
Your way to show you
Where to steer to, where

To steer away. We
Scrutinize as well
As signal to you.

Who’s out there tonight
In the black fog, bent
On delivering

Contraband cargo?
We’re signaling you.
We want to save you

So you can thank us,
Preserve us, visit
Us, love this lighthouse.

Getting Means Giving Up

Most of what you fantasize
Getting is really to keep
The best part of what you have,

And this includes the sweeping
Categories—the climate,
Peace, justice, democracy.

Even if you’re just greedy,
You don’t want all that money
So you can upend your life—

You just want to pump it up,
Inflate all you’ve got. And if
You’re lonely, longing, aching

For touch, you imagine it
In the context of what’s good
In whatever life you’ve got.

This is why celebrities,
Billionaires, and autocrats
Complain so much. They gave up.