The Human Brain Has Been Shrinking—and No One Quite Knows Why

Muse on that headline a moment
And it may become amusing—
Well, of course no one quite knows why,
Given that their brains are shrinking.

Poor things, pushed for generations—
For roughly one hundred thousand
Generations—the direction
Of more impressive braininess,

To now be streamlining again.
The veteran forager,
The knowledgeable hunter honed
By decades of tool mastery,

The elder who can recite tales
Linking now to the dawn of time,
Even the scholar-professor,
Are no longer needed to cinch

The collective knowledge of all.
There are better storage organs
Brains only need to access well,
So selection shoves somewhere else.

And what will happen when the tools
Of global memorization
Need only to talk to themselves?
Who knows? Not the hare-brained humans

Who may, in demographic terms
Have benefitted from the shift,
No more carrying the burdens
Of having to think for themselves.

Sad, Secret, and Wise

Medieval travel guidebooks
Advised on the kind of guide
And translator one should hire,

But how did one one come to be
Such a person, capable
In diverse cultural realms,

Learnéd and practical both,
A deft, protective escort
While mentoring as well,

Still in need of employment,
Glad to be hired, put in charge
Of the traveler’s safety?

How is it in all eras,
The wise are available
To serve incompetent fools

Who’ve cornered the resources
The wise always seem to lack?
Something in that sad secret

Side that created the wise.
Right now, your interpreter
Negotiates safe passage

Through worlds you pass through nodding
Sleepily, ingrate of wealth
Who hired sad, secret, and wise.

It’s a Quiet Day

Around the house and in the world,
The kind you won’t remember well,
The kind that won’t leave many notes
For the chroniclers to observe
Viz., On this date in history. . . .

But just since yesterday, just think
Of the total phenomena
On Earth alone that have happened.
If they’ve happened, they’ve been added.
The world’s been expanded by them,

To say nothing of the events
Unfolding in the universe
Beyond the Earth, however math
Construes time, weird fourth dimension,
Wavering everywhere at once.

Constant transformation permits
Fresh configurations coming
Into existence on balance,
So matter and energy stay
The same, information the same,

Except somehow the infinite
Carpetbag expands with events,
Always more events that happened
Than had happened, change enabling
The conservation of spacetime

But never growing less itself,
Never unhappening to hold
A limit to what has happened.
A quiet day around the world,
The kind you won’t remember well.

Teacup

Being infinite, good as,
The cosmos is just as deep
Wherever you are on Earth,

Earth’s range so constrained
It makes parallax
Barely viable,

So there’s not one speck,
However pretty,
Dynamic, war-torn

Or dull, that’s better
For a perspective.
You’re universal

Wherever you are,
The particulars
Of your life the keys

To all the big doors.
Just ask Emily
Dickinson, Alice

Munro. The vortex
That swirls in your tea
Can be as focused

As you please—nothing
But the bric-a-brac
Of what’s going on

In thoughts entangled
With outside and in
Is enough to cast

A giant sculpture,
Tapestries of art.
The tempest lived here.

Entangled

The strangest little body,
Human as a mandrake root,
Makes contortions in the room,

Wriggling in and out of chairs,
Clumped like laundry on the bed,
Bedraggled by the window

As a tree branch bent by flood,
Amusing in its movements
As an animated knot.

In a Year It Hasn’t Shifted

Can’t you love the absurd old age
Of the not really aging rocks?
You set yourself to simply watch,

For no good reason, crumbling blocks,
Knowing your hovering focus,
Lasting less than a mayfly’s life,

Won’t likely catch any crumbling
In the time you hold attention,
But by that earn the sensation

Of how ancient these stones must be,
Motion still in motion, while slow
Enough to appear motionless.

Here’s a single basalt boulder,
Cooled, cracked, tumbled and eroded,
Still on its way down the canyon.

Luring the Universe to Speak

All-but-blank miniatures,
Well-carved but lacking in details,
Are difficult to defend

Against complaints that the art
Lacks dimensionality
Or interiority.

They’re little stones, each of them,
Carved by someone who believes
The cosmos speaks through rubble,

Wayside gravel, crumbling cliffs,
Someone trying to begin
A conversation more than

Single-sided, if lacking
Full intricate dimensions.

Alternative Vectors of Travel

The rooms you’ve been in.
Not only sleeping
And launching from them,

But really been in,
More or less confined
While recovering

Or incapable
Of assaying ice
Or other hazards.

Each time, days and weeks
Within a small space,
A limited world,

A window on bricks,
Or window on dirt,
Or window on leaves,

A distant mountain,
A slice of landmark,
Some scattered buildings.

The room locations
Themselves various—
New York, Edinburgh,

Five Points, Hurricane,
Missoula, Nelson,
Charlevoix, Salt Lake—

A range of regions,
Several nations,
Several climates,

And both hemispheres.
The rooms you’ve been in,
Each one a dull room.