Tragedies Don’t Require Hubris

Mesas
Have the best cliffs,
Steep, sheer as walls, higher
Than castles, much better ruins
In wind.

What’s Truly Gone

You say there’s nothing left,
But there always is, if
It’s only something, if

It’s really nothing much.
It’s a strange fact, rarely
Remarked, that this cosmos

Doesn’t often erase
Very well and never
Perfectly, even though

Any given pattern
Or patch is doomed to go—
Like scraps of continents

Built billions of years since
That have skipped subduction,
Like soft-bodied fossils,

Rare, certainly, but there,
Like sturdy coprolites,
Like shadowy outlines

Of fallen walls in woods,
Homes surfacing from sand—
And not just on Earth.

The sky’s dusty with wrecks
Of stellar explosions.
Every wave gets erased

But never perfectly,
Quite. Or maybe it’s just
What’s truly gone’s unknown.

Maculopathy

There’s a metal disk, the size

Of a dinner plate and stamped

To look like a double-chinned

Face—prominent nose and closed

Eyes, plump cheeks—surrounded by

Ten wires bent to look like flames,

Hanging on a stucco wall.

Although it’s this ruddy-bronze,

Vaguely floral, human face,

Anyone would recognize

It as sun, as in, that sun

Hanging up there, on the wall.

How perfect is this symbol

Everyone recognizes

For imagining the thing

You can’t look at directly

As a benign human face

Reflecting nothing, eyes closed?

You could stare at it for hours

And not see any deeper

Into what a meaning is.

How Everyone Got Here

From Gobekli Tepe
To Nagar, half again
As many years, at least,

As from Umm el-Marra
To ancient DNA
Deciphering of bones

Of equids from both sites
To provide evidence
That kungas were hybrids.

Everything compresses
As it recedes from view.
The early, wild species

Later bred for battle
With domesticated
Donkeys are now extinct,

And extinction has ways
Of demarcating gulfs
Wider than yesterdays.

So ancient sites seem linked
To each other, despite
Their vaster gap in years,

Despite how they forecast
And practiced behaviors
That created these gulfs.

Why is it so crowded,
Always, on this planet?
How’d everyone get here,

When everyone’s going
And no one and nothing
Can stay? Takes to make more.

The Daredevil

Maybe you climb into your boring
Ordinary vehicle to drive
Your customary route downhill

And, when you’re not thinking of your debts,
Or your ordinary social life,
Or your assorted obligations,

You may notice your old familiar route
And think, briefly, what a boring life.
You’re driving a car, you idiot,

Indulging hours in what would have been
The most terrifying adventure,
The most unthinkable adventure

Of a lifetime for any human
Just a few generations ago,
Almost any human ever lived.

There’s a Shady Spot to Push Through

It’s a shame there’s no way in
To recollection without

Passing through the construction
Sites of pronouns—we, you, they,

And the rest of them. A child
Sits on a yellow plastic

Black-wheeled contraption
That scoots across the green lawn

When feet press against the grass
And the warm dirt under grass,

Summer somewhere, privilege
Of a few moments, who knows?

Nonsomnia

There’s some comfort in that spot
Where senses are dimmed, not gone,
When you’re just enough awake
To not tempt the brain to dream,
But nothing’s overwhelming—
Quiet, but not silent, dark,
But not pitch, warm, but not sleep.