The What It Is

Ontology’s got nothing
On intentionality—
You can know the quiddity

To ti esti, of a wave
In the way it is a wave,
And know its haecceity

In how it’s just that one wave
In itself and no other,
And likeness can mediate,

Like the trough connecting each
Of these superpositions,
Whatever, but can you know

What the wave has on its mind,
What the wave intends for you,
How it wants to swallow you?

With intentionality,
You can develop prescient
Self-awareness, including

Of death, you can have beliefs
And superstitions, you can
Shape rituals, religion,

Raise political structures
And conspire to bring them down.
Best and worst of all, you can

Convince yourself the waves crawl
Menacingly toward you
As night skies plan around you.

But what really is it, this
Thing, intentionality?
It comes from out of nowhere

Or was always everywhere,
Latent in the universe,
Thinking about what to do.

That One Last Cricket in the Dark

Stops rasping, the courtyard
The quietest it’s been
In months, not a single

Night delivery truck
Grunting in predawn dark,
No wind through the canyon.

This lull, this pause, the moon
And all the misleading
Local planets off scene,

Just darkness but for stars,
One faint lamp down the street,
And a stray awareness

Thinking to itself, well,
This will be another
Day for historians.

Next to None

You forget it’s a physical world.
Dreamers all, you ignore the detail,

That from your face to the nearest wall,
Even if right in front of your nose,

Billions of tiny events take place,
Electromagnetic waves waver,

Gravity creates geometries,
And none of it is to do with you

And your thoughts about what day it is,
And your thoughts about what you should do.

Preparing for Bed

The way their wings in flight sound
Like soft decks of cards shuffled
Hard by a showy dealer,

The house finches in the sage
Can be startling at evening—
That quick-drummed riffling from shade

And then the reassuring
Cheeping and trilling. Bedtime.
Birds declining everywhere,

Humans blaming each other
As greater chaos descends.
The pair with the summer nest

Return now in late autumn.
No eggs this time. Just to live
Until next spring, just to live.