Standing on the Deck Below

There’s not much difference
Between hope and a hop,
Not in English and not

In the actual act
Of taking a small jump,
Believing in the ground

That will scoop you, the arms
That will stagger but hold
Up under your landing.

No? Is hope less certain?
Well, that’s what the silent
E on the end is for—

Hope takes longer, is more
Drawn out, more aria,
Less plosive, a bit less

Aspirational. Hope
Holds that silence that says,
Catch me, still, if you fall.

Why We Never Get to the Point

No one’s really using the same units.
There are no same units. Only closer
And closer approximations of them—

Step, foot, meter, year, month, day, hour, second,
Better and better, more precise seconds,
Approaching that apex, the perfect point.

It’s good for coordination. It’s good
For murderously cooperative
Humans to agree like that. That’s the point.

There is no point in the cosmos itself.
There are no points, just pointed likenesses.
It’s an endless sea, chain mail of bright scales,

Overlapping waves protecting the skin
Of the leviathan, reality,
The dragon whose every scale is unique.

Still, scientists keep refining standards.
The idea is to agree. Agreement
Oils the points with which to slay the dragon.

Innovation Is a Mess

How does a creature that never
Built a wall in all ancestral
Generations one day decide
To build the first wall? It must have

Been some halfway perimeter,
Extension of the hearth circle,
Maybe a barrier in front
Of a cave or a heap of brush.

Innovations remain mysteries
To the innovators, stories
Made up by the inheritors,
And burdens dragged around the world.

Walls and fences thread everywhere,
New ones, ruined ones, crisscrossing
The planet in a tangled snarl
Of ripped, heaped-up net. Slip the net.

Micronation of Light

There’s one particular tree
On the mesa, one that seems
To be separately lit

Any sunny afternoon.
It’s a smallish juniper,
Maybe three tall humans high,

A few piñon, prickly pear,
And scattered ponderosa
Stand around in the same light,

But it’s different for this tree.
The brain and the eyes work hard
Together, but can’t see why.

It’s an ordinary green.
It’s not lit up from within.
Its compact core sculpts shadows

In some peculiar way,
So that the whole tree seems carved
Out of green stone and sunlight,

And the sunlight’s normal gold
Looks tarnished on it, almost
Tarnished silver, like moonlight,

As if the tree had been brought
Out of another painting
Of another time of day

And discreetly, stealthily
Transplanted here, to look weird,
Magritte smiling in his beard.

Ugly Peaceful

To be properly ugly,
You have to be in some way
Quite strikingly beautiful.

To be properly ugly
As landscape, you need a scene
Handsome enough for people

To congregate and ruin
The fine details around you.
To be properly ugly,

Mix greenery with stray trash,
Some elegant, curvaceous
Contours crosscut or gouged-out

By gravel pits, power lines,
Abandoned cabins, unsealed
Roads, pit toilets, parking lots,

Or the like, under blue skies.
To be properly ugly,
Water helps—a scruffy shore,

A tumultuous influx
From an irrigation pipe—
Sweet sounds of running water,

Calm sounds of lapping waves,
Birds that can make a living
Out of questionable depths.

Peacefully, the pick-up trucks
Line the shore by the boat ramp.
A few small boats float far out,

A few folks in waders stand
In the shallows, doggedly
Casting, again and again.

The only clouds are contrails.
There are buds on the aspens,
Snow patches in the mountains.

Really

As well as anything else, maybe just as well
Allow the truth to be whatever will allow
The grief that you feel as real, the grief that you feel
For what you know is real, and for that you know it.

Hairy Black Holes Notwithstanding

It’s still a problem, you know?
If nothing is truly lost,
Then where does everything go?

Why can’t it ever come back?
What’s the meaning of being
Not lost, if it goes like that?