Chún Chūn

We made this up. We don’t know
If it can even be said
Or makes sense. We were thinking

Of all the millions of words
In languages that aren’t this,
And we started wondering

If the character for chún,
Employed in Mandarin terms
Involving simplicity

And unadulterated
Purity, could pair with chūn,
For spring. In English, pure spring

Is a frequent pairing, but
Mostly as advertising
For water—pure spring water.

Purity is dangerous
As a notional ideal
For a compound animal,

And spring’s a season unknown
In the tropics. Still, something
About the pairing, pure spring—

Chún chūn?—feels bright and global.
We are what you know of us.
Then again, what do we know?

Owl Calls, Meteors, Clouds of Stars

The problem with holding
Responsibility
Responsible for help

In guiding justice and
Punishing wickedness
Is that, as a substance,

Responsibility
Is malleable, can be
Applied unevenly,

Can be stretched thin. The more
Agents between killing,
Murderer, and victim,

The trickier it is
To use the principle
Of who’s responsible

To apportion sin, and
Responsibility
Dissipates in the wind,

Murdered in consequence
Of many decisions
And so many weapons.

Responsibility
Implies a special case,
Special understanding

Of causation, and cause
Is not something humans
Know they don’t understand.

At wolf hour, in quiet
Canyons, a speck listens
To an owl while watching

Brilliant meteors burst
Through the backbone of night.
Responsibility.

Honest Nostradamus

Things keep happening.
That’s all things do,
And things keep on happening,
Even once things explode.

Some things you notice,
Most things you don’t,
Many you sleep through.
At some point, you’ll stop noticing,

Anything happening, even you,
And that’s it for you,
But things keep on happening.
That’s all that they do.

Monos

So rarely they are, the monks,

That is, alone, it’s almost

More funny than ironic.

It’s not just one tradition—

Despite the Sword-Horn Sutra,

Buddhist monks are swarms of robes,

And the same is true of nuns.

Holy time may be quiet

As one, breathless, some evenings,

But mostly they work in teams,

Teams in uniform, of course,

As in competitive sports.

The Taoists and the Gnostics

Had their hermits, more or less

Austere or ostentatious,

But solitude, loneliness—

Those don’t comport with Sangha,

The Community. One monk,

One nun, utterly alone,

Out of uniform, at large,

No matter how ascetic,

Pious, self-abnegating,

Devoted, faithful, isn’t one,

Really, really isn’t one.

Perhaps there is an order,

Secretive of course, of monks

In disorder, all genders,

All ages, no formal faith,

Wandering the world alone

Every one of them, unknown.

Too Late Now

Can what was
Be unjust
As what is?

Side by side,
Yes, of course—
Either’s worse—

But what was
Is never,
Side by side.

Inferents

We’re all words without referents
Once we start referring to selves
As our selves, as in, us, ourselves.

Texts may be self-referential,
But you understand they have none.
We are refusing to have none.

In these lines, words are galaxies
Revolving all our little lights
Around some weighty absences,

The massive vortices that need,
That have no choice, except to eat,
To swallow, all the light. We like

To think that the seed at the heart
Of each vast agglomeration
Is not mass but nothing, the null

That starts up gravity and time,
The tiny hole in everything
Through which everything pours away.

That’s how the light goes out. That’s not
Us, of course. Our weak mimicry
In lacking selves as referents

When words start talking as ourselves
Isn’t nothing. It’s a little
Something though, nothing much. You see?

The Eavesdropper

The cherry-headed house finch,
Singing richly, was almost
Camouflaged by dark plum leaves.

The eggs had hatched in the nest,
And the usual business
Of parents, provisioning,

Had been revolving in shifts.
The last meal delivery
Came courtesy of the male,

Now pouring full-throated trills
Out of those plum tree shadows
While the female came with more.

The people who owned the house
Were paying no attention,
Watering plants, mowing grass,

Although somewhere in their skulls,
The eavesdropping human brain
Savored elaborate songs.