Ooh, I Like It! Can I Keep It?

About what want amounts to
In many or most cases—
The kid picks up a pebble

From the shore, a puppy from
The store—the adult picks up
On the appealing features

Of a new lover, new home.
The geezer in the village
Savors the summer weather

And mutters how sweet it is
Now, if only it could stay.
Now, if only, he could stay.

Childish

We can’t advocate ignorance.
We wouldn’t exist in that bliss.
But we might suggest the childish
Embrace of what you can’t predict,

The sheer pleasures of daydreaming
Some implausible wonderful,
The perpetual excitement
Of the always unknowable.

You can cloak the world in numbers
And watch it shimmer as it moves,
And be thrilled prediction’s something
That you and your numbers can do.

But the world will still be the world,
And you’ll still be a fleck in it,
You, despite every last number.
That’s something you can count on, too.

Food, Folklore, and Fashion

The three effs of appropriation,
That is, if you give an eff, if you
Have any effs left to give. Someone

Will be quick to take those off your hands.
And what, of any culture, is left,
Or would be left, minus those three effs?

Difficult to say, we would suggest.
That is, we would suggest that what’s left
Would be what’s most difficult to say

Or to see. If appropriation
Is theft, remember that thievery,
Whether by humans, crows, dogs, or rats,

Evolved to favor opportunists.
The thief will raid the obvious cache.
What’s left is hidden, the hard-to-get,

The hoard buried under the midden,
Inevitably buried so deep,
Sometimes even the hoarder forgets.

We hope to someday become just that,
Some terms preserved in middens, what’s left
Of this era this era forgets.

Bit of a Backchat Jangle

Let’s have a little causerie
On causation, shall we? Sure.
What’s causation, anyway,

And why should anyone care?
Well, you know, sometimes you make
Something happen. Make something

Happen? Well, of course. Actions
Have consequences, you know.
So, causation’s consequence?

Well, not really. Just because
Something follows, doesn’t mean
The first thing caused it, follow?

Not sure I do. What would make
A cause a cause for certain?
If something came from nothing,

You know, ex nihilo, out
Of the mind of God, the Prime
Mover. Really? From nothing?

Can’t we just say things happen
With some regularity?
No. Things are caused. Why? Because.

An Awareness Thinks It’s Special

One popular pastime of people
Is deciding what most makes people
Special compared to anything else,

Species apart from anything else.
It could be, what makes people special
Are these thoughts about what makes people

People, the species apart. A rat,
An ordinary rat, successful
Thanks to people, scampers in branches

Of an ordinary maple tree,
One of a species nonnative, here
At least, thriving here thanks to people,

Just as in many towns and cities
Recently sprung up around the world,
Very recently found in the world,

There are parks and leafy neighborhoods
With ordinary, nonnative rats
In ordinary, nonnative trees.

And it all seems so ordinary,
Rats and people and cities and trees,
And, you know, there is no one species

Being special here. There’s a special
Thing happening, something in the air,
Many-specied, recently aware.

Still Life in the Deep

Keep the lights off. Use the glow

Available as it is,

Wherever it’s coming from—

You want it feeble. You want

Not to pierce the darkness but

To glimpse it to understand

What it is about darkness

That makes it this animal,

Creature made of what it is,

And not what it moves within,

Not like the leviathan,

More as if the waters lived.

The energy you are, glow

With, if you will, that outlines

Your shadow against the dark

Is not just you, not just yours,

And no, you needn’t gift it

To some imaginary

Authorship to see as much—

The glow that you are is faint,

But it is continuous

And has been continuous

For nearly four billion years

Without ever going out.

That’s what it means to sit here,

Faintly aware of the dark.

You are the briefest of shades,

But you’re the leviathan,

Or the lamp in its belly

As it navigates that dark

It has navigated now,

Has partnered with, has swum in

And danced with, billions of years.

Incompetent Sleep Mentation

Smarty-pants, you pay a price
At night for your daily gifts,
A nightly price, steep sleep price,

Whenever you drift away.
Do you know how your brains make
Dreams? The short answer is no.

Your brains are creating them.
Your brains can agree awake
That your brains create your dreams,

But dreaming, you can’t think straight.
How are your dreams weaving scenes
And, more importantly, why?

Maybe your dreams process waste
That your brains accumulate
In burning too fast by day.

But your dreams aren’t competent
Enough at waste removal
To even begin to say,

And as you collectively
Wise up with your drugs, tests, screens,
Labs, and imaging machines,

Your dreams are just getting worse.
For brains to learn about brains
Dreams must get stupider first.