Voices

They won’t go away,
The people talking,
They’ll never shut up.

For every minute
Of solemn silence—
Hours, years, of talking.

Librarians know.
Severe abbots know.
Without enforcement,

And often with it,
Humans can’t shut up.
Only solitude

Gives you half a chance
At peace and quiet,
But then you’re trembling

With the urge to talk
To yourself, to read
Anything, to write.

A pack of voices
Wanders off, circling
Your unquiet thoughts.

Passing the Ghost

Adelaide Crapsey once wrote

That falling leaves sound like ghosts,

Like the steps of passing ghosts,

And not that ghosts sound like leaves,

A simile that suggests

She could count on the reader

To know the experience

Of listening, as she had,

To the steps of passing ghosts.

Something in the assumption

Hints the assumption itself

Could pass as a kind of ghost.

The Perfectibility of Memory

Sunset on the mesa,
Chatty tourists posing,
Encouraging the sun
To go behind the clouds,

To take away the glare,
To bring the magic hour.
The magic hour. Cloud! Cloud!
We have to hold hands, though.

Eyes were closed in that one.
Do we look too cringy?
We’ll do that after this.
Get ready to jump in.

The shadows are too harsh.
Your eyes are just shadows.
I’m gonna come closer.
Remember this cute pose.

And Off He Went, into Whatever Else Lay in Store for Him That Day

Nothing lays in store for you,
This day or any other.
The past is everything but

Strangely indeterminate.
Your future’s not a warehouse
Of stuff in storage for you.

It will show up in your past,
Looking highly familiar,
Some weirdly unlike the rest.

Keep living, keep accruing,
Keep shedding what you’ve accrued.
Narrate a few anecdotes.

Use your vivid memories,
Your supplies of languages
And literary phrases.

That’s what you’ve stored up for you,
Your details, all in the past.
Nothing lays in store for you.