To Have Powers Beyond Those of Mortals

Supposedly, every mortal
Dreams of this, of being super
Hero, villain, or demigod.

We’re often reassured of this
By other mortals. Super strength,
Super vision, magical skills,

Complete invincibility.
So, mortal, how much time is it
You spend imagining these things?

What would you be, if you had them,
Other than what you are, writ large?
You sense your gods go on fighting.

Why are you dreaming of winning
Rather than wishing for being
Free of hunger’s competitions?

Weak in your imagination,
Is that it? You can imagine
Winning. It’s happened. Free hasn’t.

Such Is Life

Such a fine expression, if
You can wholly live in it,

The shrugged shoulders, the wry grin,
The sidewise tilt of the chin,

Not even hinting at bliss,
But not sarcastic, not grim.

A kind of taking it in
As willing to live with it—

Such is life. It always splits.
It lingers. Then it goes quick,

A river of waves that drift
Beneath your limbs as you drift

Along in them. Lift. Drop. Lift.
Again. Lift. Drop. Swim. Sink. Swim.

It’s not your call to keep it.
It keeps you, takes you with it.

The March of the Downy Birch

Doesn’t matter who’s
Displacing what or
What’s replacing who—
Change won’t be pleasant
For the vanishing

And possibly not
For the triumphant
Individuals
As such. You don’t get
To succeed in life

On Earth. It’s your kind,
Your pattern, that clears
The ruined remnants
Of earlier ways,
As those ways shoved off

The ways in their way
Before them. Downy
Birch are on the march
Across the tundra,
While the permafrost

Outgasses methane,
And what froze before
It was digested
Rises into light.
You’ll haunt the next life.

Words’ Words’ Wordlessness

Lleshanaku, via Gjika,

Suggests, Silence is the music’s

Music. Musing on this, musing,

Musing—would that mean wordlessness

Is the poem’s poem? It’s appealing,

No doubt about it. To not do,

To not add further to this heap

Of our proliferating terms,

To pull a Cage, name intervals

Across which no words will appear,

Let the specifications stand

Like curly brackets for the poem

That announces its wordlessness.

But no, that’s not how silence works.

Silence is the music music

Listens to, that’s all, not a kind

Of music you can make. Likewise,

Wordlessness is contemplated

By words in ways makers of words,

Our puppeteers, can’t comprehend.

Much Dimmed by Ground Air

The brightest star in the sky
Depends on the location,
The sensory equipment

Of the observing machine
Or beast, the fascination
Or boredom of that same beast,

The era, in centuries,
The weather, night after night,
The season, whether it’s day,

The whole of the viewer’s life.
There’s something out there, there is,
But what’s it to you it is?

You’re nothing much but nothing
Is as it is, other than
To you, brightest star witness.

Day No One’s Likely to Remember

Then again, define no one.
You might not remember this,
But this was the day someone

Bought a car only to have
It break down on the way home,
The day that the hospital

Was too full to take someone,
The day someone lost their job
And someone found a new one,

And that’s just your neighborhood.
No, this day wasn’t minor,
In that it was many days,

Billions of days all at once.
If you lived billions of days,
You’d live some memorable ones.

It’s just most days of your own,
Each your own, are like this one,
Not to be remembered long,

And no one can live billions.
The billions come all at once,
Until all of them are gone.