Sometimes the Answer Just Clicks

You mirror the wreckage well.
Solve the problem the hard way,
Then check it the easy way.

If the check shows you were wrong,
Go back around the hard way.
That’s the swiftest way to learn.

Outside the window, the wreckage
Sprawls from the cliffs and glistens
In a cold rain. It’s sliding

All the time, but only some
Rare moments it really slides,
Then settles in place again.

Tunes in Dense Fog

Sun is a kind of substitute
For music. Sun in the window

Lessens the craving for music
An overcast day generates.

In that alone, if nothing else,
By the way, these times are better.

Music is like tap water now,
Like plumbing, like electric light,

Unevenly distributed,
But available with a flick

For billions of lives at a time.
It’s better, still, to make your own,

Better to share communal tunes,
But what recorded music lacks,

It makes up for by being there,
Available, a type of grace

In dark days when the same problems
Press in with or without music—

Better to have recorded songs
Than only the lowering fog.

In the Diaspora of the Lights

Darkness had frayed as it multiplied.

For every new surveyor’s stake topped

With a black flag, the new medieval

Conjecture of sea monsters edging

An exquisite, inadequate map,

The new, we’re-unsure-what-could-be-here,

Now marked not by blank but by that word,

Dark, there was another string of lights

Headed into orbit, another

Blazing skyscraper culling more birds,

Another parade of bright billboards,

Another gigantic, glowing eye.

Meanwhile, from tech salons to book clubs,

From Davos to the Dark Web (what else?)

People forecast the return of night,

Half of them pretending they’d prepared

Or could prepare in time for a fight.

The whole discussion would be dated,

Ridiculous within two decades,

But for now, in the light’s pollution,

The favorite topic was darkness,

Darknesses, divisions of the dark,

As one by one, the usual ways,

Private darkness once again went dark.

The Remoteness

Having lived your life up close
And personal, not only
Dragging around one body

Dragging you around with it,
But largely confined to one
Species, one era, one Earth,

You’ve come to think perspective
Is distant and abstracted
If you take a few steps back.

You’ve no idea how remote
You really are, or can be.
Every day, the telescopes

Churn out updated pictures
Of galaxies, and you nod.
Nice images, fine spirals,

Very large and far away,
Yes. This is the remoteness,
Your perspective on billions

Of star systems, which for now
You’re still free to imagine
As uninhabited dots.

What have you to say for them?
What are your observations?
Likewise, what might you remark

About the lives you know live
Multiple generations,
Thousands of generations

Every few days in your guts?
They, too, are the remoteness,
The distance you can’t but keep

On the miniature worlds
You host, never mind the worlds
Your friends and family host,

The many-petalled, spiral
Melodramas in the dark
Interior of someone

You met once and considered
Interesting enough to write
Something personal about.

A Basement

So here you find yourself
In caverns you can’t crawl
That keep leading you on,

Even as they threaten
To finally crush you,
Even as you’re hoping,

Still, someone or something
Unbeknownst to you is
Jaquaysing the dungeon

So you can find some way,
Some secret exit out
To daylight or moonlight

Or a wet back alley
In night’s metropolis,
Whatever. You’ll take it.

Losers can’t be choosers.
Any half-dignified
Way to say bye suits you.