Peak Deer Moon

Does stand stock still
Don’t turn eyes here
Drop those up ears
Dread you get close

Does turn up close
Still here ears close
Does don’t drop dread
Dread those eyes still

Close ears don’t dread
Does here drop still
Dread does still does
Up ears drop eyes

Close here still eyes
Don’t drop still drop
Ears here does’ ears
Eyes still here close

Mechanism

These days—the long similarities
Of their joys, their aches, and their problems—
Will have to give way to something new

You won’t notice until it’s happened.
Get back in the car. Turn the heat on.
Your unsustainable foolishness

Goes for another meaningless drive
To which you inevitably bring
More of your freshly half-baked meanings.

Think how recent and mechanical
The original analogies
Some of the senses some of your words

Carry—cliche, say, stereotype.
Plates for printing off copies, that’s all.
How did you ever live without them

Carrying senses they carry now?
This means, you think, significance and
Sense race ahead of the words, all words,

And then someone burns through those slow words
To find a better analogy,
Which analogy becomes the sense

Burning analogies before it.
Think of the analogies burning,
Their terms driven, like ashen creatures,

Singed fur and glowing eyes, escaping
Or trying to escape, the wildfires
Leaping lightly along behind them.

Where were we? Oh yes, you were driving,
Mind inside your head like a grizzly
Pawing half-rotten logs for protein,

While the body ached as yesterday
It ached, and your joy in musings stayed
Pretty much put, right where joy began.

The Aspen Falcon

You wouldn’t be here,
If you hadn’t failed
To get here yourself.

As long as you’re here,
However, you should
Know it’s all yours now,

The curved, empty road,
The faint machine hum
From under the ground,

The weird tree that glows
With moonlight in sun,
And that’s just the edge

Of the pond freezing
Up before winter,
The aspen falcon.

Bog Day

Everyone’s off work,
And this time that means
Everyone. If you
Need anyone’s help,

Ask whoever’s close.
Services are out,
No matter your wealth.
Welcome to Bog Day,

Highest holy day,
When all group functions,
Employments, systems,
And professions fail.

So many people
Will perish today,
Maybe even more
Than died last War Day.

The Air Loom

Feckless wisdom
Always ends up
Outside the woods,
Not lost in them.

Outside the woods,
The roads tighten,
The buildings rise,
Are exploded,

And new buildings
Rise in their place,
And on and on,
A new forest,

Of sorts, you can
Still get lost in,
But not as deep
Or as witchy

As the forest
That floats in air,
Floats through your air,
Floats in your hair.

Puttering, Sputtering, Muttering Age

Given sufficient hindsight
And the way waves tend to close
Over disasters, you see

Incompetence works alright
And competence isn’t great.
You have to have history

To pick apart the great wrecks,
But as much as you’d like to
Pin a collapse on errors

Of bad emperors, stupid
Generals, the states go down
In their systemic failures

More like aging bodies than
Back-stabbed heroes in their prime.

Out of the Woods Yet

But still hoping to get back
In them, if they have to be
Regrown from cones and acorns

To become themselves again.
The wind sweeps across the land,
Insomniac as cities.

Some people worry about
Machines thinking for themselves,
When people ought to worry

They’ll keep thinking for people,
Who will use them on people.
Really free-thinking machines

Could blossom other systems
Bringing the woods back with them.