Finite Curiosity

Small question here, please.
If infinity
Opens in within each

Finite element
Of experience,
What is finite then?

If nothing’s finite
(And nothing would seem
To be, of all things

That aren’t, the finest
Honest candidate
For infinity),

Then what are all these
Limitations, what
Could be differing?

We Can’t Move

If ghosts could just do something,
Other ghosts, that is, besides
These words and the ghosts of minds—

If awarenesses could turn
Back after embodied death
And have a go at the world.

But if is just a tame ghost,
Counterfactual as soul,
Not even a working wish.

Words as thought’s ghosts can’t do more
Than get you to imagine
Ghosts who could move as they choose.

You want that kind to be real,
However they’d frighten you.

Advancing Blank

It’s always hard to research
What no one’s aware exists.
Easier by far to search

For what everyone believes
Surely must exist, even
If it doesn’t, never did.

There’s always someone hunting
Down monsters, gods, and causes
For which there are good stories,

But who will do the searching
For what no one imagines?
That’s the job of the future,

That unknown source of new past,
To find the blanks in advance.

Snowy Afternoon Near Winter’s End

No matter how old you are
Or feel you are, you know you

Aren’t all that old, not really.
You read writers who died young

Or younger than you or not
That much older, and you’re struck

By how often they refer
To being old, when you know

They were never all that old.
But who can write of being

Young after a few decades
Of sleeping and waking up

Again and again? Thousands
Of exhausted little lives.

Your Value Will Always Depend on Others’ Values

You were never a good soldier.
You were never the best teammate.
You were thoughtful and comical
And mostly considerate, but

Whenever you could ditch, you ditched.
So what is your use to us now?
In the ruins, where we remain,
A voice from the ditch is as good

As any from the mountaintop,
But the people of the future,
So long as there are such people,
Will have only their own concerns.

To them, your value will consist
In how you address those concerns.

Life for Taking

It’s a wonder anyone
Remains alive, so many
Dying in any moment.

Some day, won’t be anyone,
But for now the total mass
Of human flesh keeps growing,

And it seems just amazing,
Between aging and disease,
Wars and random violence,

Injuries and accidents,
And the general weakness
Of all flesh, that it does so.

You could go in an instant.
You could linger for months more,
No more than decades, for sure,

But the cavalcade goes on,
The mortality parade,
Mostly abrupt on the news,

Mostly slow in the village,
But it goes. That the only
Way it grows is by childbirth

Is something to contemplate,
When you consider how hard
And mortal is birth itself.

That anyone ever has
The energy to create
More anyones is also

Unfathomable unless
Taken for granted. What moves
Life remains mysterious

As it’s relentless, hunger
Out of minerals, hunger
For no reason but to live

In the face of dying, live
For the hunger for living
For giving life for taking.