Downhill

The juniper near the road
That glows as if it’s moonlit
In full sun is going dark.

How long do you want to stay?
Some folks wait for the sunset
Or even linger longer.

You thought you were one of those,
But now you’re tiring, fading,
And maybe you’ll go dark soon.

Other people continue
With doing important things,
Arguing with each other

Or supporting each other
As alliances guide them.
You stare at the juniper,

Sunlight at the tip of it
And then nothing but shadow.
Cliffs glow, but you roll downhill.

How Could You Have Happened?

The story ends
As the author
Decided it.
That’s how you know

There’s no author
To this cosmos.
It’s not ending.
Still, the question—

How did what was
Without authors
Spin a species
Of narrators?

In flesh you are
Ordinary,
Until you start
Stories that end.

Invalid Daydream

It’s harder to fantasize
What you’ll do when you’ll be gone
Soon. The dead can’t spend windfalls,

And the desperately ill
Can’t live as remote hermits.
So much for day-dreamed futures.

And yet this is a future
Of a sort, this recent past
That keeps on minting itself,

Where you sit wrapped in blankets
And chronic complaints, watching

A wren hop by the window,
Wind in the sapling’s spring leaves.

You’re Bad at Preventing What You’re Good at

Some four thousand years ago,
One of the rulers of Ur

Tried to keep the Amorites
Away by building a wall.

It didn’t work. Amorites
Were already all over.

Babylon was full of them.
History has forgotten

The ruler who built the wall,
Remembered Hammurabi,

One of the Amorite kings.
It’s hard to keep humans out

Of other humans’ homelands.
It’s an invasive species,

Restless, pervasive, shifting,
Populations frequently

Replacing populations.
It’s odd people even try

To keep other people out
Raising so many failed walls.