A Tradition

The body, despite being
Irrelevant to the world—
The body, despite being

Neither its own nor your own,
Another animal heart
With that little storm of you

Flickering in its skull’s cells—
The body, despite being
Already halfway to dead,

Halfway or more, will not let
Go, will not let itself be
Dissuaded, will carry on,

Keep going until it’s done.
In a sense, you admire it,
While you’re also part of it.

You understand the spirit
Of the cellular pirates
Descended from it, expunged

At great cost from it.
A tradition of going
And going without quitting,

Even when eating itself,
Life, billions of years of life,
The body, spiting being.

Source Your Own Flares

There’s something like a wildfire
About all of this at once,
A wildfire in the mountains

Where you can see the orange
Patches on black slopes, fire lines
Wriggling down one side at night,

The scariest destruction,
Or at least the largest scale,
Far off, haze and reek of smoke,

But also these falling sparks
Now and again, threatening
To set you on fire yourself.

But that’s not right—what’s burning
Here didn’t fly in from there.

Little Wonder

Bemused by glory,
You feel extracted
From the rest of self,

Such that even pain,
Even appetite
Fall from awareness—

It’s not possible
To feel contented,
Caught up in wonder,

Which is one reason
Why wonder junkies
Put down contentment

As simple or mere.
If contentment is
Like an opiate

To them, wonder’s their
Hallucinogen.
Wonder’s amazement,

Pure a thing as joy.
If there is wonder
In this world, this world

Is more than this world—
Wonder means portal
To another world.

Just knowing it’s there
Is what’s important,
And people bemoan

The loss of wonder
On the regular
In a way no one

Often expresses
Any great concern
For contentment’s end.

A sense of wonder,
That’s the real treasure.
A world of wonder

Is a world greater
Than any mere world.
It has an exit,

Even if you can’t
Leave through it, an awe,
A glory observed.

After the Asteroid

In the midst of relentless
Likelihood, we dream and dread
Extremes. The rarer, the more

Likely to lead us into
Obsession. The car breaks down
After not being repaired,

Old age discovers ill-health,
Hard work produces modest
Accolades from old colleagues,

All the while we’ve been thinking
About some near miracle
Or being struck by lightning.

How do the lightning-struck feel?
What’s life after miracles?
All the evidence suggests

That, after extremes, priors
Get adjusted, thoughts drift back
To new forms of dream and dread,

While likelihood reasserts
Hegemony over days
Continuing to wander

After the great miracle,
After the strange disaster.

If You Want to Cut a Deal, You Need to Give It Up

You have not been sinned against.
You have not been sinned against
Enough to be permitted

A story of being sinned
Against, a story in which
Your role is protagonist.

And if you haven’t been sinned
Against even by that much,
Enough for one story in

Which you are protagonist,
You must have been, on balance,
The one doing the sinning,

More sinning than sinned against.
Tell us whose story that is,
Who you sinned against enough.

Garden Gate

How much of what does it take
To get someone regular
Of no particular bent

For antisocial actions,
Much less violent actions,
To cross the line to do harm?

That the banal do evil
And the mediocre raise
Massive armies for tyrants

Is no news. But where’s the line,
The tipping point that, shoved past,
Creates the bloody-minded?

Is it unpredictable?
Or obvious as a door?

Used Books

A coherent set of ideas
Evolve and tumble together,
Inhabiting communities
Of bodies seeking benefits.

As individuals see them,
Ideas are lifespan scaffolding,
Although, as most people use them,
Ideas function more like weapons—

Catapults, stone walls, siege engines.
Ideas rise and are abandoned
As living bodies, social groups
Thrash out resource competitions,

But successes among ideas
Are only partly determined
Via human populations.
Ideas feature their own descent

With modifications, and since
No one human population,
No one kind of community
Has yet sequestered everything,

Any vibrant set of ideas
Evolves ways of recombining,
Moving to new populations,
Justifying different dreams

Of bodies in competition.
The most sacred architecture
Of a people might shuffle off
To show up as rephrased ideals

Held by rival demographies.
Each pond has its inhabitants
That found their way from other ponds.
You think that thought’s yours? It isn’t.

So As to Accept It

What do you do, when you’re ready to go,
To get this crumbling world off your chest,
But there’s one person you know,

Know and love best, that’s just launching
A life, one that needs you around, so
Calm leaving’s just your selfish longing?

You look to savor rest when you can get it,
The best of what you can’t quit, haunting
Your own hours, living so as to accept it.

Pain Killer

The sweetness, when it settles,
Is unalloyed forgiveness
Until placed in a context.

At dawn, three scruffy mule deer
You’ve known for more than a year
As neighborhood residents,

Browse just outside your window,
Just as the sweetness sinks in.
You’re fine with having context

For the mule deer, a story,
Nearly, to tell about them,
The mother with the collar,

The two year-old, last year’s fawn—
The mother has recovered
From last year’s leg injury.

The two-year old, to be sure,
Could have a fawn this winter,
And they’re all three bold as brass

In this town without hunters.
There. The three scruffy mule deer
Have been placed in a context,

But the sweetness before them
Is still only the sweetness
Unless you’ve forgotten it.