Empire

Consolidation
And fragmentation
Can both be brutal,

And they always take
Lives, generations,
Before they reverse.

You’re living either
Through one era or
Another right now,

And the odds are long
Against surviving
Through its reversal.

There’s maneuvering
For ascendancy
Coming and going,

And you yourself might
Be a small warlord,
Or a royal heir,

Or politician,
Or wealthy schemer,
Local or global.

Probably not, though.
Probably you’re just
Extending your life

In power’s shadow.
You’ll have some ideas
Like everyone does

On what’s going wrong,
What could be better,
Where the wickedness

Is concentrated.
You’ll have your fears, hopes,
Fierce rooting interests.

But the great structures
Of systems rising,
Consolidating

Or coming apart
Around you do not
Much resemble you.

Intertidal Zone

A sleepy afternoon
Before another storm,
The winds stalk the mesas

Like they’re browsing, maybe
Hunting for prey, maybe
Seeking out a bolthole

So they, too, can lie low
When the next snow bores through.
The hikers ignore them,

Happy on sunny trails
Or at least quick to seize
A holiday Monday

For some hours outdoors
While wars go on elsewhere
And none of the locals

Fond of their flags and guns
Are shooting anyone.
On a rock in the wash,

An unarmed gnome curls up
With a book and a phone
Between patches of snow

That have been in retreat
But will advance shortly.
It’s all tidal forces

However far inland
You hide, however small
You are. Tide’s out for now.

Futility Fuels the Search

So long as we will never
Understand, we will insist
On trying to understand.

If, by any accident,
We suddenly understood,
We could surrender effort,

Going still as molecules
Ever go still at the edge
Of a quiet galaxy,

Far from new star nurseries,
Exploding supernovas,
And the suction of black holes.

We would lie, little angels
Of understanding, and smirk.

Ghost Grand Battue

How big would the library
Of lost language have to be?
All the morphemes ever were,

All syntax, signs, and whistlings,
All the symbolic gestures—
All the ones now lost that is—

How much would that amount to?
Everyone grab beating sticks.
Make a ring around each pole,

Then move to the equator,
Battering every meter,
A chivaree for each wave.

When all the ghosts have flown up,
Net them, tell us what you’ve learned.

Summing Over All Equations

Luck is only the sum of the events
Beyond you cocreating your context.

Do you have any idea how many
Events crisscrossing each other that is,

Little swimmer that you are in those waves?
If you have a long swim before you drown,

The other swimmers may count you lucky,
But who could possibly count every wave?

You didn’t conjure them, call them from shore.
Their buffeting isn’t the signature

Of fate crosshatching your skin. They go on,
With or without swimmers in them. You swim.

Discrepitude

The older you get,
The less your dreams will
Contain of faces
Close to yours in age.

Too young, too charming
Faces will litter
Your dreamed encounters,
Which, since they are dreams,

Will take no notice
Of this illogic,
Until you wake up
Marooned in your bones.