Sweet Acclimatable You

You get used to one way, and then
You get used to the following.

You get used to the improvements
More quickly than to the setbacks

And falls, but you get used to them
All, you all do. You’re good at it,

Getting used to it, you wouldn’t
Still be here if you weren’t. Your folks

And ancestors were good at it,
And so won’t be your descendants,

If you have any left here at all.
They wouldn’t be there, if you weren’t,

And they won’t be there, if they aren’t.
You’re what now was so used to it.

No One But One

Makes two. One and no one,
The one that’s bracketing
The one that isn’t there.

This is grief and haunting,
The set that is but can
Recall it holds nothing.

It’s a terrible thing,
Not to be nothing but
Left holding some nothing,

Something of emptiness,
You, something knowing you
Hold what you couldn’t hold.

Read Us to Us

A year is just a day,
And just a year of years
Ago, you went by sail

And horse-drawn carriage,
If that. A couple years
Earlier, cities were

Rare heaps of mud and stone,
Here and there. We were there,
And some years earlier,

But then our memories
Get hazy. Being born
Is a messy affair,

More known about than known,
Mostly a mystery,
Even for history.

A Pretty Long Run of Good Dreams

An island universe

Of billions of stars lies

Sixty million light years

Away, which doesn’t mean

A damned thing to living

Life on Earth, but roll it

Around in your thinking

A little bit for fun,

For the terroir of it,

An island universe

Of billions of stars. Huh.

Can’t it still stagger you?

Sometime, consider minds

As miniature stars

And all humanity

An island universe

Of billions of live minds.

Or consider your words

Living our long half lives

As tunnels of meaning,

Evolving attractors

Of more meanings, burning,

An island universe

Of billions of meanings—

And then, that all life lies

Eight minutes from one star.

How lonely could it be

To be a galaxy

With its own history?

Universe of islands.