Stash

Ochre gambel oaks go copper,
October being October
Among beings for whom the word,

Any word, the word of a god,
An angel, or an honest soul
Indicates no significance.

Well, what can words do about that?
Acorns, we say. Scrub jays, we say.
Chattering chipmunks on branches.

They’re all going away, we say.
It’s anachronistic today
Just to collect such words we say.

Meaning Requiem

It’s beginning to mean

Just sad music, just sad,

But be quiet again

And rest. A sense of peace,

Of easing into sleep,

Used to gather in it.

Its language family

Includes cognates for it

That indicated joy,

Well-being, happiness.

Makes sense. Life’s paradox,

Or one of them, that is,

Is that being hungry

Is life wanting more life,

But life is exhausting,

And so, while lives go on

Longing for more of life,

Lives also long for rest,

And so, too, well-being

And melancholy twist

Their roots with joy and rest.

Backstage Characters

Caleb Scharf’s analogy
Of oxygen and data
Is several ways intriguing.

One of the odd ways would be
To imagine it removes
Information from the core

Trinity with energy
And matter, making it more
As an element would be,

An example of something,
Examples of which fill whole
Tables of such elements.

While the universe can’t have,
It seems, gain or loss in sum
Matter and energy fields,

Oxygen, one element,
Comes and goes. Information,
If it were an element,

Could also come and go.
What the other elements
Of information’s table

Could possibly be, who knows?
Surely Scharf’s analogy
Wasn’t meant to stretch that far,

But our curiosity
Is piqued—imagine data,
Per se, just one example

Of weights winking in and out
Of amounts—information
Lightest, then meaning, then what?

Or What’s the Use

Kant’s crooked timber
Of humanity,
Zhuangzi’s crooked tree—

From neither any
Straight lumber ever—
But for one, too bad,

And the other, glee.
Crooked, born crooked,
Getting more and more

Crooked with weather,
Years, and injuries,
Short-lived bristlecone,

Reluctant bonsai,
You have to wonder
If you could incline

More to glee. Depends
On whether you feel
You’re useful, maybe.

Driven Far from Mind and Abandoned

Full frontal

in the shade,

Like Wolff says,

We are here,

Staring down

Your pupils,

Denuded

Of what words

Meant to you.

Variations on the Leadership Song

You are the helmsman, the sail,

The oar, the hope! O, but we,

We are nothing but your boat,

Lost without our helmsman, sail,

Oar, or hope, while you’d glide well,

Being all those things but boat.

Helmsmen are nobler than boats.

Let’s row with helmsmen for oars!

Let’s scud the waves, oars for sails!

O, great helmsman, you’re nothing

Like us, your mere pegs and boards

Keeping you dry as you float

Serenely to the future

In which your vision foresees

You’ll helm bigger, better boats.

O oar! O sail! Steer us through

The stormy seas to that port

Where you will get off our boat.

Worm Dreaming Imago

On the satellite map,
They appear like tent moth
Caterpillars well-packed

In their subdivisions.
You can almost sense them
Wriggling in the webbing,

The coiled streets of houses
With aspirational,
Wholly misleading names,

Idyllwide, Rowley Downs,
Hidden River. No downs,
No idyll, no river,

Just the chains of houses
Snugged into polygons,
Real places, real suburbs,

Real bedrooms, real people
Coming home each evening
To eat and go to sleep.

To eat and go to sleep.
To eat and go to sleep.
Let us eat. Let us sleep.