The Short View

No army’s busy shelling
This village in this canyon.
The day slides down a long slope

That near the solstice matches
The trajectory of sun.
This is a coincidence

Of perspective, not the work
Of prehistoric peoples
Constructing stone calendars.

The light strikes a gray daybed
In a bare room, gilding dust.
The children have left the house.

It’s peaceful, and it’s quiet,
And there are no bombs. This is
Coincidence, perspective.

Wayside Aside

When reality is taken for granted,
The events themselves are immaterial.
Quiet Coleridge. Among the things revealed

By the many versions of this reasoning—
The spirit being greater than the letter,
The higher truth transcendent over mere facts—

None of them are actually a higher truth.
The things revealed are all the ways any truth
Remains dependent on its shifting context

For the feel of truth. It’s not higher, deeper
But different, with different qualities,
Different domains, and different meanings.

Shakespeare’s anachronisms are not a part
Of higher truths about British history,
Nor about the essence of the human heart.

They are facts about Shakespeare’s plays that differ
From historical facts in other sources.
Facts are not jigsaw pieces. They’re gravel heaps.

The Preacher

Every so often, someone
Declares new theology
Or declares that such-and-such

Is on the way to being
The newest substitute for
Theology. Let’s go down

To the river, shall we, and see?
Every so often the stream
Changes shape, flash floods roar through,

Droughts shrink it to a trickle,
But the water isn’t new.
Earth’s hydrological spin

Cycle sends it back around
And around. The thirsty drink,
And there’s no true substitute.

Naked Protection

Small words are often arrogant—
Life and death, time and space, that sort.

What if we formed a little club,
A private circle in this poem,

Where only humble small words fit—
Skin, dirt, dust, socks, that sort of thing.

Let’s pull off our shoes and socks,
Bare the soft skin we’ve been shielding

From that dirt and dust. Soft is not
Really a sin. It can be torn

And make you wish you’d hidden it,
But it grew first to shield you first,

Now, didn’t it? Give it a chance.
Pluck your heart out off your sleeve

And roll up your sleeve to show this—
Bare is your first and last defense.

Even the Sun Can’t Synthesize Gold, Which Comes from Terrible Stellar Explosions

Tumbled stones in old snow form
Their pinto pony patterns
On the slopes. The day begins,

As all of this spins smoothly
As it ever has, to face
The local furnace again,

But it’s tilted. It’s winter
Solstice, almost, one of those
Years when disasters’ just past

The horizon to the west,
Destruction over the east,
Paroxysms of human

Violence against humans,
Against swarms of living things,
Crushing cities and species

At accelerating rates.
It’s quiet, mostly quiet
Here in the tourist canyons

For now, but the cold belies
The coming sun that, for now,
Just brushes the slopes with gold.

Morning with Alarming Forecast

Dismay is not as bad as grief
Or pain, although it can follow
From them. Dismay more clearly ends

Rather than eases or abates.
Think of something that panicked you—
The leaky pipe, the unpaid bill,

The awful evaluation.
However they resolved, you’re here.
You’re no longer dismayed by them.

Dismay is the antipodes
Of May, or antipodal May,
The lip of winter in the mind,

The thing you just discovered might
Get worse before it gets better.
Dismay is part of the climate

Of a constantly spinning world
But not the part that’s regular
Or enduring. Dismay’s weather.

Chilly Witness

You can’t get warm.
You think you may
Never be warm
Enough again.

Your life has been
Unimportant
By most human
Measures, knowing,

Meanwhile, human
Measures must be
Unimportant
To the cosmos.

You’d like to be
Warm, a witness
Comfortable
For good. You’re cold.