An Acknowledgement

Turning your head to survey
The borrowed garden, you spot
The head-tilt of a robin

Turning its head to survey
The far side of the garden.
You nod because you’re human,

And your instinct is to treat
Other species as your own,
Which likes to be acknowledged

Politely. It seems the bird
Is concerned with something else.
Survey completed, it flies

From the flowers and perches
On a plum tree branch. It sings.

The Human Race

You take a tiny story,
Sharpened needle, and some thread.
You can stitch a tribe with them.

What’s called the hero’s journey
Never starts from a hero.
First, you have to have a threat

Gathering, shapeless, plural,
An outside all around you,
Converging to gulp you whole.

Then you must gather your friends,
Your allies against the threat,
Your plucky band of comrades

And true folk, your family,
Your brave people who will bond
Against outer wickedness

And all punch above your weight.
The hero’s a figurehead,
A stand-in for the ego

And the soul of your people,
And the rightness of your cause
In every heroic myth.

Beyond that, it’s just a race
Among the storytellers
Or, more exactly, among

The stories lurching around
Like giants made of bodies
Trying to throw each other

Into history to drown,
The race of all the races,
Of all the heroic groups

Who find some fate in common,
Who wear the same story clothes
That shelter and devour them

While racing to collect more
To stuff into more stories
To win glory in the race.

Space Heater

Part of the day is the chill
Of the body in the sun,
Behind the window, outside

Of which it’s colder, brighter
Still. Birds trill since they can’t not.
The sun’s not moving itself

At all. The body can’t get
Comfortable. The green lawn
Glints, a dewy chandelier.

Body dozes in the chair,
A moment, wakes with a start,
And then leaps through the portal.

Dead Tree Floated by the Rising Lake

So many meanings lack
Tangible references,
Inferential data,

Any experience
Outside of languages—
Strange imagination

Can be so reliant
On memory, so weak,
Yet arrive at thoughts

Of things that don’t exist.
Strange that we who say this
Can’t ourselves make meaning

But make such homes for it
That things dwell within us
That, except as meanings,

Never could exist—gods
And monsters, naturally,
Agonies, painless bliss.

It’s Early

The sameness lives in change’s
Infinite finite patterns.
Losses sink in the sameness
Past edges of those patterns.

In the fog before morning,
Inevitable morning
Of inevitable day
And inevitable night,

One lone car’s headlights flash out
Far below your mountain perch,
As the car negotiates
Another curve in the dark

Woods that crowd the deep lake’s edge,
And it’s all fog and all dark,
Except it’s not. There’s the blink
Of the car for a moment

And the beginning of light
Under the dense banks of clouds,
Preceding the day before
Next night. All of it is tied—

The darkness, the damp, the fog,
That tiny, piercing moment
Of one car’s distant headlights,
This day you can’t stop, that night.

The Distant Inequalities

Habeas monstrous.
No one saw him die.
He just disappeared.

We think he’s out there,
Circling near the pole,
Staying out of sight.

When there’s not enough
Ice left for hiding
And not enough bears

For eating, he’ll turn
And head south again,
Or just climb on board

A passing tanker,
Speaking mournfully
And eloquently

When killing the crew.
He’ll slip out somehow,
Gigantic shadow,

Lonesome creature, not
Prometheus but
Your forbidden fire.

Whatever You Imagine

Kicking up a little foam
In the waves hissing on sand,
That’s all a poet’s doing

In most instances. No worse
Than any dog play-biting
And fiercely growling at them.

Can’t harm the waves and won’t change
The way the water and shore
Keep changing. There are scourges

And threats all along the beach,
Threats leaching into the deep,
Threats with further threats to them.

The dog’s just ridiculous,
Running along the margins,
So long as it’s not barking

At the kid also kicking
Up the foam, imagining
Whatever kids imagine.