Scrawny Timber

The wolves of memory aren’t done hunting
The thundering heart and blood-flushed muscles
Of their prey still trying to get away.

They’re ravenous, they’re famished, they’re failures
At this essential coordination—
Look at how many of their hunts conclude

Nose to tail in the den, bellies empty,
Or, at best, half-sated on smaller game.
There are sleek, thriving, silver packs out there

Chasing the largest, darkest memories
By moonlight in the shining mountain snows
Packs that bring down the shaggy, rolling eyes

And gorge themselves on their recollections,
But this tatty pack howls and half-pretends
That maybe the forest lacks for recall,

Lacks midwinter’s trauma megafauna
So substantial any reader running with them
Could live on the marrow of emotions

The wolves were too full up to finish off.
These wolves of memory aren’t done hunting,
Won’t ever be until life’s by the throat.

A Mutant Raised on a Farming Planet

Manual labor breaks glass bones,
But you loved the smell of the world
Of tools, of wood and leather, dirt
And old machinery in barns.

Frail frame in a bar of sunlight,
You could hide out like that for hours,
Inhaling those musty hay bales
You couldn’t pitch, reading your books,

Science fiction, mostly, spaceships,
Gleaming equipment and weapons,
Summers at your grandmother’s farm,
Fantasy free of irony

As the warp speeds and hyperdrives
Easily slipped the speed of light.

After the Wind Cut the Cloud

Not all ghosts linger;                     But over the waves
Some have rushed themselves,     The air remembers
Whisked their wispy threads.

                                                        Something that seemed gone,
To delicate clouds                           Something that happened,
That traverse the air                        Behavior itself,
Like coastal towers,
                                                        Material moved.
Great as fortresses                          That it moved at all
But dissipated                                 Was all that remained
Like conversations
                                                        After anyone
Before anyone                                 Tried to be spirit
Had ever written                             As well as matter,
Or inscribed one word.
                                                        Losing the waving
You can’t be haunted                      But leaving the wave
By what isn’t here.                         Forever happened.

Future

You were downtown on a busy day,
Dodging traffic, scrutinizing
Opportunities and hubbub,

What was going on at the end
Of the street, evaluating
With an eye to efficiency,

Considering what would come next
And next after that, down the line,
All the calculations of time

Bustling along the horizon
Glimpsed in the gaps between events.
And then, a realization—

Your world would end in a few steps
And the rest would never happen.

All Possible Messages Are Equally Likely

You want the adventure, you do.
If you can just set it up right
So that you get that blurred window,

Dead in six months or in six weeks
Or, who knows, six days, but not clear,
Not certain, dying like a life within a life,

Coda, recapitulation
Of the whole pattern in the end—
It’s not hardly the ideal death,

But it’s still pretty fortunate.
You’ve been given warning and aid
And the sweet gift of certainty

Boxing the uncertainty, max
Complexity, max adventure.