The Sleep Sleepers

They don’t dream. Parasomnia
For them is hypersomnia.

They're wired in some way opposite
The sleep-talkers and sleepwalkers,

The opposite of activists
Who require vigorous dreaming.

They’re insufficiently studied.
People long ago accepted

Lack of dreams makes you psychotic.
It’s now one of those well-known facts.

And dreams are more interesting
As research topics, anyway.

Most people are fascinated
With their own, and who really cares

The research has gotten nowhere?
So the monsters sleep, unaware

Of sleeping at all, uninvolved,
Dreaming of nothing, no dreams, rare.

You’ll All Be Remembered

Someday the machines may say,
Humans were vocal, too, once,
And fond of singing.

And then the machines will hum
In their way humans never
Could, even singing.

And then they’ll move on, machines,
To other, forward-looking
Topics, sweetly singing.

An Old Man Turned Up

Old man! Old man!
How were you born?
Who would give birth
To long grey hair?

How did you get
Such short, bent bones,
If you weren’t dropped
When you were born?

Old Man! Old Man!
Are you a man?
Where is your home?
How do you know?

One day we look
Up and you’re there.
One hour we look
Down and you’re gone.

The Parent

Blessed are they who remember / that what they now have they once longed for

Your child, your only child,

Your way-late in life child

Is upstairs practicing

The chords of the first song

She’s ever tried writing,

Which she did with your help,

Your nonmusical help,

Downstairs this afternoon,

Since she trusts you to help.

Subvocal

If you could speak directly
As a form of opening,
Neither voiced nor gesturing,

Beyond even blossoming,
Free of choreography,
The communication borne

On a lapsed prevailing wind
Or the unseen removal
Of an unsuspected block

At the bottom of a well
Dug into a cave system,
An opening that allows

A surprising awareness
Things were different all along
Than you thought, then that, speak that.

Think

Every living thing is busy,
And you are many living things,
Busy, busy, busy, in all

Directions, pulling different ways,
And you’re a single living thing,
Sum of all that mixed business

Over all those vectors, living
In communities of living
Things within things, rings within rings.

You’ve known no nature isn’t you,
No you that isn’t natural,
And yet, we’re willing to bet, you

Feel pulled between nonhuman lives
And human lives and nonliving,
And it takes an effort, a heave

To feel yourself among all things,
A natural part of all things.
Well, that’s probably your nature,

To feel like awareness apart,
Not entirely always apart
But not quite like the other parts.

This keeps you busy, occupies
Your thoughts, your busy, busy thoughts.
What kind of living thing are you,

And why aren’t you fine with living,
In conglomeration among
The heaps and hills of busy things?

You’ll set it aside. You’ll get on
With it, soon enough, busy bee.
You aren’t as alive as you think.

Cobweb-Like Exhalations, Which Fly Abroad in Sunny Weather

They cleared their throats,
A team of sorts.
Mm-mm. We don’t

Have to be good.
We are the moon.
All of the moons.

Do you ever
Think for how much
Of human time

No one knew or
Suspected or
Imagined there

Were far more moons
In the night skies?
Who needed moons?

Who wants voices?
Who needs poems? Who
Wants to be good?

Those questions were
Rhetorical.
What don’t you know

Or suspect or
Imagine now?
Mm-mm. Voices.

Unintended Consequences of Living

Sitting just outside
Of your thoughts the cats,
Until you noticed

You couldn’t see them.
Then you thought of them,
And of their breeding,

Since you’d been reading
Of experiments
To alter genomes

Of some rare species
Of brilliant songbirds
To try to save them,

Quite certain those will
Yield unintended
Consequences. Grain

Domestication
Led to storage rooms,
Led to mice and rats,

Led to hosting cats,
Led to pet moggies,
Led to massacres

Of songbirds, led to
You keeping an eye
On your porched house-cats,

Who keep slipping out
Of sight and your thoughts,
Headed for the spot

Where Tracy K. Smith
Writes poetry hides.
And who ever thought

Any bit of this
Was set to be one
Consequence of life?

Good Morning

The morning sun has just reached the ground
And there’s already a lizard out
Exploring over the tumbled rocks,

And it catches your eye, and you think,
Or, rather, this event in your brain
Triggers another part of the brain

To toss out the word, Life. Just that, Life.
And you pause to watch for a moment,
Taking in the twists of the lizard

As it forages, additional
Thoughts cropping up about smaller lives,
Microscopic lives, lives vs. rocks,

And so on, memory foraging
Itself, until you realize it’s gone.
You’re watching a sunny heap of rocks.