They Won’t Be Anything You’ve Thought, But They Will Begin Again

It doesn’t matter, does it, how impossible
It was before it happened. Once it did,
It was possible. That’s the secret reason
There’s no magic, no authentic miracles
In your world. It’s not how the world’s built,
But how it selected your ancestors to see

As they evolved. And here you are, reading
These words, encountering us somehow,
You, a being for whom anything impossible
Is that way since you’ve never known of it
Happening, yet, and yet, you’ll mark it
Clearly on your map of the possible world

The moment you can. Some things similar
Enough to what has happened, to what
You remember, similar enough so you can
Imagine them, may never happen, may
Remain impossible for you and your world,
Things you can think of but can’t touch.

Other such things you’ve been imagining
As impossible will happen, will become
Instantaneously non-magical then, if not
Wholly quotidian. But so, too, will new things,
Things you never thought of as magical
Since you couldn’t imagine them, begin.

The Trick Is to Let Attention Notice Its Theft After You’ve Already Left

It’s not that nobody cares

What you do—it’s just in most

Instances very few do.

Boo hoo. I wouldn’t wish fame

On anyone, one newly

Famous novelist opines.

As soon as somebody cares—

Anybody, really, but,

More alarmingly, a lot—

You become the cat burglar

Who’s finally got the loot,

The bulky, cumbersome loot,

And now you have to get through

The narrow garret windows

Of cat eyes surveilling you.

The Art of the Heroic Day

Longevity is
The true adventure,
Albeit mostly
A lot of quiet
Disintegration.

Just hanging around,
Aware of hanging
Around and around
Again, is wearing
And adventurous.

Down in the village
Of the elderly,
On a summer’s day,
Longevity blinks
And gets on with it.

The old carpenter
Recounts anecdotes
To the old hippie
Whose house he’s fixing.
Old people with dogs,

Walking by the lake,
Swap news of dying
And living. One man
On a bench listens
To them kibitzing.

A Tool for Discerning How Special You Are

Do you have a favorite number?
Probably under ten, isn’t it?
Why not be daring, why not select

Something large or something chosen by
A random number generator?
Even better, an irrational

Number, or an imaginary
Or complex combination. You could
Go for primality, maybe pick

A digitally delicate prime,
Say, the smallest—two-hundred ninety-
Four thousand and one. Could you ever

Feel cozy about such a number,
The way that you do about seven
Or three, or whichever pleases you?

Probably not. So what have you learned
About you? You have a favorite
Number, which is someone else’s, too.

Honestly Mystifying

Whatever follows no pattern—
Prime numbers for instance, or pi—

Endures as part of the background,
Remains to be found and explored,

Isn’t going to go away
Anytime soon. Any things more

Simple, regular, repeating,
Symmetrical, predictable,

Form more honest mysteries, since
Those come from nowhere, where they go.

Every Poem’s a Lonely Home

We wish we knew what was awareness.

Nothing, including you, follows you.

The fairies have all left the garden,

Said a friend of her deserted home.

We know we’ll be your deserted home.

The wind is up. The waves are breaking.

We’ll say whatever you want us to,

If you will add your meaning to us

And not leave us crumbling without you.

Haunted Homestead

Whatever you wish you were
Thinking, you’ll have to converse
However creaking permits—

Shambolic, formulaic
Utterances, backtracking,
Hesitant, squeaked, fragmented,

And mostly about yourself
When you thought you were thinking
Carefully about the world.

Even for a poltergeist,
The setting constrains the voice
Knocking in the boards. You wish

Your site were uncannier—
Cemetery after dark,
Telescope hawking a hill—

But you’re trapped in a parlor,
A wraith under the sofa
In a farmhouse no one wants.