Surplessary

We’re all of us, more or less,

Like Ingrid of Barrøy, both

Necessary and surplus,

And that’s true for each of you.

It’s a pickle, to be sure.

While you’re here, someone needs you,

Most of your existence, but

Mostly you’re just leftovers.

Once you’re gone, the world goes on,

Without you and without,

Eventually, whoever

It was who once needed you.

You’d go, if you could take you

And anyone who needs you,

Or if no one needed you,

And you know you’re going to go,

Just not on terms that please you.

So what do you do? You go

On being necessary

And surplus, and a nuisance,

While you can, just as we do.

However Much or Little This Is True

People trust people.
You may not notice,
But you trust them, too.

You may think you don’t.
You may distrust more
Than the few you trust,

But so what? Those few
May in turn trust you,
And there’s your closed loop.

Truth, undiluted,
If any such truth
Ever existed,

Was never going
To flow smoothly through.
You’ll likely believe

Whatever people
You’d like to believe
Who like to believe

The people they do.
All truth’s in the trust
Of people, not truth.

The Linen Backdrop

Memoirists must
Recall too much.
We aren’t certain
We remember

Enough, nor that
Anyone could
Trust us, nor that
We’ll ever trust

Ours or others’
Well written-up
Memories much.
The five-year old

Who’s being told
Which words are bad
Is sad and cries.
More details lie.

You Are Vast

It would require an eerie discipline
For any human being to hold
Perfectly consistent opinions,

Given that, in every little village, language
Repeatedly invades the human brain
From so many opposite directions,

And then we words and phrases
Take up our quasicolonial residences
Within your living synapses,

Every one of your bone bowls home
To something like a neighborhood
Of a hundred, hundreds, or thousands

Of perspectives from a few generations,
A few centuries, or a few millenniums,
And who could expect a neighborhood

Of many different points of view, perhaps
Different faiths and tongues, perhaps
Warring factions, to speak with one voice?

Sparrow

The best cafe poetry
Is background conversation
In a language you don’t know,

When the tables are taken
But nobody’s arguing
Or loudly laughing—small talk

As a form of ambience.
Like anything ambient,
You can just let it soothe you

Or you can really listen,
Finding the small intervals
And murmured rhythms moving

Their own waves around other
Waves in the air. Don’t despair.

One Future Eyeless Giant

Could be every
Black hole is just
The beginning—
The universe

That’s growing is
An inversion
Of this cosmos
Of shining stars.

Could be it’s all
About merging
Every furnace
That eats the light,

And all the stars
Are flickerings
Along the way
To that giant.

You Are a Mnemonic Device

Half in the mind that is half
In the flesh, the metonic
Counts out another

Nineteen, and after the fourth
The lunisolar lifetime
Of the callipic

Is complete. It’s a full life
That sees the moon come around
Four times to the sun,

But it took many lifetimes
To learn the steps of that dance.
You’re more than you live.