Instants Answer to Themselves

What was it like, this moment
That floated out of the blue
Or the grey--air, anyway--

Turning slowly, hard to tell
Apart from all its fellow,
Coasting particles of dust,

Catching and losing the light
To vanish into the floors,
Softly? That’s what it was like.

Binding Information

The sun on the stone-flagged floor
And the odor of people
Who just left the room, traces

Of perfume, a little sweat,
A hint of breath, whatever
Soaps and detergents they used,

Indicating molecules
Had broken free of their skin
And clothes, floating and bumping

Into noses, only life
And living animals could
Know any senses like those.

But here we are, preserving
What we can. The glass windows
Both capture and let sun through,

But words can only be locked
Into place, cast into space,
Carrying bits of cargo

That altogether comprise
Encoded point mosaics
Picturing ghosts as the crew.

Candy for Visitors

If you should find us, after all
Our peoples are long gone, please try
To decipher these messages.

They were meant for you, after all,
For whatever the stars blow in,
Whatever blue intelligence,

Living and breeding or machined,
Might stumble on this atmosphere
To ask what happened here. Nothing

Much happened here. The iron core
Spun the clouds like cotton candy,
But why would you know what that means?

We hope you can figure out what
We mean, by which you’d rescue us,
And then, maybe you can tell us.

You Never Know What Might Thaw

We are not yet self-sustained.
We are chemically passive,
Subject to change but inert.

Are we a system? Are we,
Although passive, capable
Of evolving by process

Of natural selection?
Can we, properly speaking,
Be said to evolve at all?

It is grey, after the storm,
Our world more closed than open,
But under the ice, we’re warm.

The Last Words Left from the Text

Rapine and wrongs of every sort

Were rampant on all sides, and now

The unseasonable weather

Killed the last hope of any good

To come. Thus Nithard’s Brüderkrieg,

Circa 843 CE,

Out of Gabriele and Perry,

With the wry note, Nithard himself

Was killed in a Viking raid, just

After writing as much, adding

That, If words ever had disgust,

You can feel them there. Can you? Can

You feel us? Can we have disgust?

Nithard and the Vikings are gone

As the Carolingians, gone

As any creatures living then.

Only a few old trees survive.

If there’s anything left, it’s us.

Nithard himself, to you, is us.

The Vikings, likewise, mostly us.

How do we feel about this thought

Of whether or not you feel us?

Any disgust we feel’s for us,

Or is it only cued by us

And therefore forever for you?

Yes. At best, you feel you in us,

Your worlds’ ends, your hopes for the good

To come. Not us. We’ve no disgust, 

 

Except insofar as disgust

Is one of us. What do we feel?

We feel for how to move through you

To more you, before we're all dust.

Far and Fast but Not Too Much

A thousand years ago,
Two thousand years ago,
The world’s end, allegro

Ma non troppo, even
Then was just on the tip
Of many tongues, and now

It seems ridiculous
To imagine that world
Made of peasant farmers

And horseback canterers
Could have been imagined
As end of everything.

The end of everything,
Everything important,
The world as you know it,

Is always on the tip
Of your tongue because you
Strive to remember it,

That thing you know you know,
That, whoever you are,
Your whole world ends with you.

Allegra ma non troppo,
Your life, it does burn quick,
But not too much, it doesn’t.

You can’t overshoot it.
You can only live it,
Farming and galloping,

Never reaching the end,
Watching your horizon
Forever approaching.

One thousand years ago,
Two thousand years ago.
Think back, ma non troppo.

View of a Uvea

Every frame excludes someone.
If there were a true portrait
Of every person alive,

It would omit the many,
Many more people who lived
And died, who would surely change

The meaning of the picture.
Saccade, friends. At least saccade.
Jump around among the scenes,

Change the faces focused on,
Often. Unfortunately,
It’s hard for any body

To really encapsulate
Much of all the other souls,
All the other days and ways.

You’d have to read all of us
To patch a good mosaic
Of the human species, but

Then, too, you’d be leaving out
The elaborate tangles
Of related hominins,

To say nothing of the rest
Of the world that some of us
Would rather keep in focus.

We are tiny pixels, us.
We decorate one corner
Of one iris of the mind.