Yahk Slough

Practice is the bridge that connects
What you see in either forest.
The road goes on, effortlessly,

Since it doesn’t repair itself.
It lies there, before and after
The bridge crossing over the slough,

And, if people work to fix it
While pulses of vehicles crawl
Around assiduous roadwork,

Well, that maintains the road just fine.
And if people abandon it,
The road effortlessly declines.

Wish You Didn’t Have to Go

You can sense without even

Odd instruments it stays full,

Replete, mere rearranging,

The shuffling of the changes.

And it’s been tested enough

You accept the math’s upheld—

Energy and matter stay

Interchangeably the same,

While information is saved

And, at least in principle,

Remains to be recovered.

What, then, goes away? Order,

Say. Entropy increases,

So order has to decay.

This is less satisfying,

Less and less so, day to day.

There are local reversals,

And the grand calculations

That say the cosmos began,

Or must have, with such and such

Orderliness, and will take

These orders of magnitude

To reach maximum decay,

Feel less certain than they look,

Given how little is known

About the absolute shape

And fate of the whole shebang,

Even how many shebangs

In how many dimensions

There might be or have been.

And yet, there’s some direction.

You feel it, literally,

In your bones, and neither math,

Nor ideologies, nor

Faith in supernatural

Design schemes of deities,

Can reverse that felt pattern.

Everything changes and goes,

And nothing ever comes back.

What do you mean, everything,

Once you’ve ruled out energy

Or mass or information?

The moment-to-moment state

Of affairs, this moment

You’re leaving, is everything.