Longueur

Waste is a goodness, away
From the life that can’t use it
Or discovered by the life

That can. This isn’t final,
As declarations go, not
The last thought by a long shot.

Like all the rest of the silk,
The lines are testing, testing
For the strong holds through thin air.

Waste is only distressful
Found by life that can’t use it,
Or, sadly, undiscovered

By the life that can. Boredom,
For instance, when not to hand.

Bestrewn Sin

You’re such a difficult possession
For a body to experience,
A new kind of parasitism

To go along with all the ancients,
And yet most ephemeral of all,
Not unicellular, not a phage,

Not even another form of life,
Not even, exactly, a hunger—
A disturbance in the signaling

Of the systems already evolved,
As if, when a wind sifts through the trees
In the blossomy apex of spring,

That breeze and the floral chemistry
Combined to create an alien
Impossible without both of them

But not belonging to either one,
Not solely the production of trees
That can’t propel signals far themselves,

Nor of the wind, which has no signals,
Only whatever data it pulls
Along with it around the planet.

But you’re not scent; you’re not blossoming,
Either. You’re a tendency that could
As well prevent as assist seedlings.

You’re a trait the body’s dependent
On now, can’t not have, can’t live without,
Too late, and you’re difficult as sin,

Which is, after all, only one more
Of the many attributes bestrewn
With you through the body, on the wind.

Perched on Rockfall in Dry Wash

One degree more northerly
And about twenty meters
Higher than Mount Tai’s summit,

Roughly a third of the way
Around the globe heading east
From the Jade Emperor’s Peak,

There is a sand and basalt
Dry wash between junipers
And piñon pines that tumbles

Through a notch in the sharp cliff
Off the edge of the mesa.
In heavy rains or snowmelt

It fills and rinses itself.
The rest of time, its stones
Are home to sunning lizards.

Mule deer clatter across it.
Skunks and coyotes leave scat.
Sometimes, hikers leave boot prints.

The nearest temple’s an hour
Back down through desert by car,
In the city of Saint George,

And although tourists visit
The surrounding parks in millions
Every year, it’s quiet here,

Except for the wind. Its rush
Suggests old Taoist notions
Of wind, the piping landscape,

Although those notions are imports
As much as any tourist.
Tsoo. The closer, Paiute word,

Onomatopoetic,
Too. The wind wanders around,
Rushing over black rockfall

In the wash. Hush, wind. You’re not
One of us, not a person,
Not a musician, no kind

Of beast, not by any name.
Waves of patterns push others,
And the others push others,

And somehow some waves end up
Caught in skulls thinking with them
How they wash around the world.

After All

If only your misapprehensions proved
At least as solid as animal flesh,
If not as stone. When you looked up at dusk

From your borrowed table in your rental,
And you sensed in the long shadows creatures
Who resembled you who weren’t quite human,

You could be confident they were agents
In their own right, about their own business,
And actually, mercifully, not quite

Human. Extra-human, slim aliens
Who were not there for the conversation
Or the competition for resources

That full humans would be, you could let them
Drift along in the evening, fairytales
Intent on their own, not-quite human needs.

You would feel so relieved. It’s not all mind,
Not all an endless game in people’s skulls.
There is something, someone else, after all.

From About the Time of the Destruction

World War II came and went.
Most people survived it.
That’s easy to forget—

For the tens of millions
Who were killed in some way
By that global horror,

There were two, three billion
Survivors, those alive
At the start and the end,

Most of whom have died since.
Thirty-two centuries
Earlier, give or take,

Just after a solar
Eclipse, the late Bronze Age
Kingdom of Ugarit

Collapsed of starvation
And repeat invasions,
Despite having lasted

A few millenniums.
In nineteen-twenty-nine,
Excavations began

At the site by a team
Of archaeologists
Headed by Claude Schaeffer.

After a decade, work
Stopped due to World War II.
Then, in nineteen-fifty,

It started again, led
By the same Claude Schaeffer,
Who had survived the war

And continued to lead
Excavations until
Nineteen-seventy. So.

A small interruption
In the reconstruction
Of the never-restored.

This is the mystery
Of civilization—
Ascension, violence,

Destruction, and ruin,
Stones joined end to end by
The spittle of small lives.