Split Twigs

Found in the Grand Canyon,
Animal figurines,
Carbon-dated thousands

Of years old, made from split
Twigs, elaborately
Folded antelope, hares,

Bighorn sheep, vultures, bears,
Origami in sticks,
Woven in wood, sacred

But scattered. Collected
By the later peoples
Of a richer, tourist,

Mechanical era,
Now they sit in boxes,
Museum specimens.

We, begun in boxes,
Would do well to end up
Scattered in the canyon.

You Local Reversal of Universal Rule

You’re probably here and alive
Thanks to black holes getting bigger.
Every time they swallow something,
Their event horizon expands,

While elsewhere the entropy shrinks
Slightly, in a balancing act
Believed to keep the flight of time
The straight arrow it’s always been.

This probably doesn’t matter
Too much to you, personally.
You’ve more important things to do
Than give black holes your gratitude.

You do. Sure, you do. But maybe
Pause to consider such patterns
In the cosmos all around you.
Black holes grow, whatever you do.

What Will Be Will Never Be Anything But

You’ve lived your whole life haunted
By the ghost of what to do
Next. Yes, you. You have. What’s next

Is never here, never real,
Is always rearrangement
Of memories in your head,

Like any ghost that haunts you.
What’s next’s just the hungriest
Vampire revenant ever

Pulling its bones together
From the graveyard of what’s been.
It’s not so bad. The graveyard

Itself is green and lovely
Much of the year—it’s your home,
All you’ve been, thus all you are—

But it’s haunted by what’s next,
Always asking you what’s next,
Until you want to bury your head

And forget. Don’t forget, yet.
You’ve never known a future
Wasn’t your ghoulish monster

Mind, the restless grave robber,
Assembling monsters of past,
Whispering, you be careful,

Look at these bones you’ll become
If you don’t pay attention!
And you believe it. You shake

In dread anticipation.
You must prepare for what’s next,
Every moment for what’s next,

Or you’ll end up grisly bones,
Like next’s cautionary ghost.
But you won’t. That ghost’s a ghost.

Faith

You’ll never linger
In any belief,
If you expect too

Much from it, if you
Believe promises
Your belief makes you.

Fortunately, most
Folks aren’t demanding—
People will accept

That what the world brings
That jars their beliefs
Aren’t belief’s fault.

True enough. Belief
Never made the world.
Don’t expect it should.

It Ends in Palaces

Seeing Padua’s Hall of Justice,
Palazzo della Ragione,
Il Salone, barn-like from above,

In a flyover app, there’s the thought—
Justice is a terrible concept,
Awful and strange, that is—frightening.

It’s an extraordinary creature
That creates systems for arguing
About what punishments are deserved,

That obsesses over just deserts
From toddlerhood, universally
In some form or another, in myths,

Folktales, and village gossip. Justice.
It might be more honored in the breach
Than in what passes for observance,

Fine tuning society to keep
The best people happy, with pretense
Of fairness and prevention for all.

Inequity aversion is fuel
For small, personal fairness squabbles,
But justice serves fairness theater

And historically’s an excellent
Aggravator of inequity.
Only the power to demand it

Can demand it, and although the cause
May, as they say, be just, the justice,
Which ends in palaces, never is.

Tree Hair

Whatever gets shed
As used and worthless,
Easier to shed

Than to do something
With by resorbing—
These plum-tree catkins

Powdering the porch,
A few still hanging
From the blossomless,

Fully leafed-out tree,
Ready to be caught
And tossed by the next

Breeze to wander through—
Or limestone shells or
The feathers of birds,

Or animal fur,
Or your human hairs—
It seems like a lot

Of life’s energies
And substances go
Into producing

Single-use servings,
Clippings and peelings,
Lives’ litter life throws.

A Counterintuitive Green

The oyster shell in the dirt
Of the planter with dead stems
But nothing growing in it,

Dug up, opens easily,
Its emptied innards wetly
Green. Photosynthesis seems

Unlikely in a closed shell
Buried in a pot of dirt
Where no other green’s growing,

But there it is, slimy green,
Like rocksnot in the shallows,
Like artificial dye green,

Brighter than the lawn or leaves,
Ferns and mosses liquefied—
Lurid, living absinthe green.

Place the opened shell in sun.
Leave it out all night in rain.
In the morning, there’s no green.