Another Slow Start to the End

Still more dusty green than yellow,
But the aspens at altitude
Are already starting to shed.

It’s like this almost every year—
However golden they’ll become
Before going snowily bare,

They slump through a weary season
At the summer-fall transition,
When they look half-dead, not splendid,

A few flecks of yellow, more brown.
It disappoints the too-early
Leaf peepers, up on the weekend.

People can hardly be bothered
With beauty so tired and awkward.

Ooh

The wind’s sounding humanish
At the moment, conversing
In tones suggesting surprise,

Half-conspiratorial,
Gossip. Actual people,
Weekending in high country,

Are actually gossiping,
And talking about outfits,
Plans, and opinions, as well,

The usual nothing much
That serves for human bonding.
The wind’s more interesting

For not saying anything,
For alternating between
A hissing in the branches

And a guttural brown noise,
Sotto voce in the seams.
Brains used to language get snagged,

Now and then, by its whooshing,
And the actual chit-chat,
Now and then, turns to the wind

Itself. While someone’s telling
Other hikers a tall tale
About a large rainbow trout,

A couple struggling to load
Their gear back into the car
Complain about the strong gusts,

And a child hunched down in rocks
Close to the edge of a cliff,
A little too close, shouts out

That the wind sounds like a ghost,
Which tells you what ghosts sound like.
They sound like the wind, like voice

With emotional clamor
But no words. Which is eerie,
Given your ghosts are your words.

Reply from Laodicea

We were thinking about spring
Water, how it can boil you,
Peel your skin, stink of sulfur

Or come out so cold from stone
That it hurts your bones to swim,
As the old poem sang pity

For the horses fording it.
What goes on below the dirt
Has as many confusions

And quasi-conversations
As anything overhead.
Humans are attentive beasts

Obsessed with labeling things,
Noticing how living flesh
Was always in the middle

Of extremes. Those aren’t extremes.
Those are more middles of things.
Let attention guide again—

Every discoverable
Extreme has so far turned out
To be more middle of things.

No matter where you landed
Among cosmic scales, you would
Be middling as everything.

Anticoagulant

You sing when the serpent strikes—
With, not in despite of, it—
Since you know this serpent’s good

For you, or, if not for you,
For singing. The medicines
For so many miseries

Are found in nature’s venoms
Of one kind or another.
Life has so many weapons.

The frontline’s always moving
Among the microbes, the plants,
The herbivores, carnivores,

Omnivores, commensalists,
Mutualists, parasites,
And what’s a weapon for one

Is a shield for another,
Is a balm for another,
And culture’s no different,

The arts are no different.
Once the venom hits your brain,
Thoughts slow, and you sing again.

Yes, but Why Is It Like This?

The whole meaning of an event lies

In the search for some meaning in it.

That’s it. You can’t stop searching for it.

It’s interesting when you can’t find it.

Not the meaning, which doesn’t exist

Yet, at least—certainly not the thing

Or event in which you look for it.

Phenomena that resist meaning,

Despite all efforts to imbue them

With same, are staggeringly boring.

What’s interesting, in these cases,

Is you, the person seeking meaning.

You’re irascible, peeved, bored of course.

What’s this? What is the meaning of this!?

It’s meaningless! It’s always the fault

Of the event that you’ve been searching.

You expected the meaning to lie

In the event. The meaninglessness

Must be part of the event as well.

But you’re determined. You make meanings.

Then you compare meanings. You make fun

Of each other’s meanings, of events

In which others find meaning, over

Your shoulders, side-eyed, mocking, searching,

Urgently, for meaning all the while.

Still, somehow, incredibly, sometimes

You can’t find any meaning in things.

To an Anguished Planet

Cease. Cede. Yield. Go,
Just go, all you
Lives, all at once,

Apocalypse,
But quietly,
A planet-wide

Walk-out, one sigh
And everything
Quits together—

Mars with fossils,
Mars with ruins,
Nothing hungry,

No one dying
Anymore. Cease
All this, desist.

What Is a Good Day?

To sum up, how many
Dozens of small events,
Cockroaches in the night,

Good dreams, insomnia,
Bad dreams, sleep until dawn,
Minor conversations,

Surprises in the news,
And we’re only started—
How many myriad

Things below attention,
Molecular events,
Trillions of adjustments,

The random tapestry
Of what did or didn’t—
And that’s just in one life,

With all its small pleasures,
Anxieties, and aches,
One life that feels compelled

To say this was a good,
This was a bad day, this
Vague conglomeration

Of things you didn’t like,
Liked, or didn’t notice,
Too many to sum up.