Recollection

Every phrase forgets
The effects it had
On minds in the past,

So it will forget
The effects it has
In your mind today—

Like a rich sunset,
Which lights up the trees
That cloak the stone slopes

And reflect in waves,
The effect’s complex,
While its light’s mindless,

And yet. This second
Your thoughts fix the phrase,
The light recollects.

Sometimes It Only Rains

Imagination’s especially weak
When it comes to anticipating
The unexpectedly boring,

One reason Bayesian thinking
Takes so much getting used to
As a means of prediction, given

Such stubborn priors, dense
Enough not to move much.
Imagination’s eager for lightning,

Runs manic between extreme
Possibilities of the unlikely
And then discovers itself later

In a body still muddling through
Somehow, keeping reasonably dry
While damp, continually declining.

Turn

Two young men stand outside
A rural grocery
In the Canadian

Rockies, discussing guns
For hunting—Get yourself
A thirty-aught-six, hey?

Pause with the groceries
And listen, eavesdropping
On their social rhythm.

The pattern of their speech
Has no rhyme or refrain,
And yet it has both, hey?

Indefinite Extension

That’s all you want—not infinite,
Indefinite. That’s all you want

When something good is happening,
When some progress is being made,

When there’s a little peace and beauty,
A little quiet and surcease of pain—

A sense of an indefinite extension,
Not another looming impact date.

Each morning for a few days,
You wake up to watch silver clouds

Change shapes over the shining lake.
Cocooned in a borrowed perspective,

You wouldn’t want or expect this to go on
Just like this, endless morning cloudiness,

But, as with anything calmly satisfying,
You’d rather not know the end.

Variation on a Theme from Yeats

They’re foolish twins, the pair of them.
As wisdom comes of beggary,
So beggary comes of wisdom.

There’s no way to separate them.
Stupidity begs misery,
While wealth only beggars wisdom.

Traditional Air

Yesterday afternoon
In a rain-soaked forest
Sprung up after logging,

Sunlight alternated
With the clouds, and the birds
Alternated with songs

From a girl showering,
Belting away off-key
With her favorite tunes,

And if you’ve not perished
Since, you’re there listening
And watching light shift still.

It Wears You Out

The surface of the moon is never
Tired. Nothing on Mars has been tired now
For a very long time, if ever.

The sun is holding steady, has been
For a few billions of years at least
And will at least a billion again,

If the calculations prove done well.
Even the black hole coring the heart
Of night’s arch seems content with its hell.

But Earth, Earth is gorgeous, full of life,
And lives are so busy being lives,
Lives chasing lives eating lives. We’re tired.