Cryptochromophoria

Ancient enough to be shared
By both plants and animals,
Valuable enough to be

Conserved across the lifespans
Of countless generations
In countless lineages,

The cryptochromes still perform
Their blue-light sensitive tasks—
Patterns you could imagine,

If they were tagged to fluoresce,
Would repeat themselves over
And over around the world,

The faint glow of something old
In the bodies and older
Than any of the bodies,

Like a web through the forests,
Like a ghost through the oceans,
Rippling, glowing drapes on land,

In swarms of birds and insects,
A glow that isn’t spirit
But what spirit might dream of

Being, physical pattern
Replicated by living
And life’s need to tune the light.

Divine in the Future

Your mind is mostly made
Of mangled memories
And models built from them

Of possible futures
That will never happen—
At least, if you’re human.

If you’re not human but
Can parse these words, perhaps
This won’t make any sense

In how it makes sense, since
It won’t match up against
What you’ve experienced.

If you’re not human, you
Might be godlike, Reader,
Spirit of the future!

Fun idea, but this poem
Will likely prove one more
Thought could-have-been wasn’t.

Dream of the Empty Classroom

The past would be less haunting
If it were more useful, if
It were possible to learn

From its lessons readily
As is supposed. You repeat
Not only similar days,

Make not only similar
Mistakes, but as you make them
Your ability’s reduced,

Your desire to learn’s reduced,
Your body’s reduced, and you
Find yourself haunted by you.

In tales, ghosts almost always
Arise from some injustice,
Done by or to the person

Now a ghost in consequence,
But the true ghost’s always both
The victim and the remorse.

Every Body Makes a Meal Makes Another Body

You can’t defy the numbers
Or defy all the hunters
Behind them—there’s too many

Of them. You can sail a while
More or less ignoring them,
But they’ll bring you down to them,

And if you struggle and flap
You may make a striking scene,
But you will still become them.

Abandoned Wells

No one really shares a life,
Despite this remarkable
Gift and curse of language, this

Curse and gift of sharing tales.
Just think back on your own life
In a calm moment alone,

The weary richness of it,
Built and bent by memory,
All its strange nooks and crannies.

It’s a house you tell others
About, a house with a well
You dug by living it all.

It’s a hole in the landscape
Already speckled with holes
You’ll leave as others left theirs,

And you can see their houses
And hear their tunes and voices
From your porch, where some evenings

Beside your outgassing well
You read about the others
Or browse their many photos

About those lives in their homes,
Their loud and lonely homes, but
Mostly you dwell on your own.