Powerful

The best of all possible
Evenings at home in those days,
The Christmas Eves of childhood.

You’re not nostalgic. You don’t
Want to go back to the tree
Decorating, the darkness

Outside, the precarious
Wishes of being a child.
That’s just the way that it was.

Those lights would be up next night
And several nights after that.
The dark outside wasn’t done,

The cold just getting started,
But the anticipation,
Later, would be exhausted.

Just one night had the power
To conjure the possible
As if it were magical,

Even knowing how it worked,
How parents made it happen.
One night, red glow, fresh tinsel.

Thousands of Teams Are You Deciphering This

Fifty-three hundred types
Of cells in a mouse brain—
Not cells, mind you, cell types.

Work is now ongoing
To catalog human
Types of brain cells as well—

Thirty-three hundred and
Barely getting started.
The specialization

Of multicellular
Organisms staggers
Multi-organism

(Plus multi-machine) teams.
How many layers of
Specialists will there be

Before the planet tires
Of assembling such teams?
And still, bacteria,

Bacteriophages,
Maybe phage parasites,
Carry on anarchies

That rule from the bottom.
What’s gained by unity
But opportunity

To become cells of the next
Level up, undermined
By every level down?

First We Are Flowers

First, they were leaves. They evolved
For reproductive functions.
They were never stems or trees,

Never whole organisms.
Still, in their ephemeral
Blossoming, you saw yourselves,

Saw metaphors for your own
Seasons of grace and decay.
You identified with them,

These body parts of some plants,
Extravagant, glorious,
Suddenly here, suddenly

Gone. Above all, suddenly
Gone, shrugged off from stems and trees.

Craving a Brute to Shelter You

Having somehow escaped
A tyrannically
Abusive parent who
Loudly claimed to love you
While threatening savage
Punishments, would you

Immediately search
For a replacement for
Your loss? Maybe you would.
It’s striking how many
Poets, philosophers,
Manifesto writers

Offer their arts in lieu
Of a lost faith in God.
Why try to make scriptures
Out of secular arts?
If it’s scripture you seek,
Plenty gets created

On the regular by
Charlatans and would-be
Prophets with as many
Assertive answers as
Faith could possibly need.
They’re lying everywhere.

But maybe a black hole
Would grow more terrible,
Even, in its absence.
It just stands to reason
There’s something comforting
About a great tyrant

And something frightening
About the lack of one.
Part of you dreams that God,
That terrifying God,
Must be great, must be good
As your God, on your side.

Two Glazed Donuts under a Mackerel Sky

A poor breakfast and a book review

Of the collected works of someone

Or other you knew of but never

Particularly cared for, never

Got, as the well-worn idiom goes.

The reviewer’s moderately kind

And only a little bit snarky.

The review affirms the poet’s dread

Of a lack of response from the world.

You glance at the soft and papery

Crush of the clouds. Don’t live for response

From people but the lack from the world.