Opiate of the People

Personally, don’t you imagine
God’s grace, any god’s grace, if it were
A name with a referent, rather

Than one of the intransitive nouns
Of fully omphalic existence,
Such as god, for instance, or heaven,

Would prove addictive? Once that first burst
Lit up the mind like a snow angel
Backlit by spears of piercing sunlight

Dispersing the worst, most dreadful storm,
Wouldn’t you be on your knees all night
As soon as the glow was gone, praying?

What’s scary then is to contemplate
The possible side effects of grace.

What Brings You Here?

Probably, you tend to assume
All things happen for a reason.
Probably, the human species

Could be binned by majority
Who feel that way deep in their bones
And minority who allow

Coincidence to play a role,
A real role, not just in the wings,
A real role, if not in all things.

Find the weird individual
Who’s comfortable with meaning
Nothing--casual, not causal--

Merely impressed by numerous
Independent variables
In this believed connected world,

And you will discover the world
Rather poorly distinguishes
Causation from sheer consequence.

Coincidence plays its own role,
A real role, not just in the wings,
A real role, if not in all things.

Grandfather Chimes

To the extent you can sense a difference
Between your past as it has been and your past
As it is now, every aspect of that change
Is a faerie flag’s revenant. If you could

Lift the changes like lace, like leaf skeletons
Out of the mulch of the composting fallen,
You could trace the architecture of sameness
That structures your awareness of what has changed.

The elaborately dendritic wayang
Of what remains of what has happened allows
You to narrate time and confuse it with change
Of any kind, when it is only kindly

Time, the stablest, most rhythmic aspect of change,
Change wearing the leafy-vined clockface of same.