Their Collected Works Are Really Something Else

We can spot the libraries
Burning on the horizon,
Half-shrouded in their own smoke,

Grim, ochre haze, like wildfires—
Probably less of a loss
Than any given forest

In the planetary scheme,
But for words, catastrophe.
Some of us will go extinct,

Burnt to ash and gone for good.
Snow is floating towards us,
Mixing with grey paper ash.

There’s a time for everything
To go, which happens to be
When it becomes something else.

The Foolish Hound’s Outing

The dog isn’t barking because
It’s out of control. The dog barks
In helpless acknowledgement that
There’s no controlling anything,

And still you try, you try, you try.
The dog barks in desperation.
It’s a beautiful day away
From the things people do to earn

Your fairy numbers from yourselves
That tell you what you can exchange
For more substantive services
And rather more substantive goods,

All the constrained, unpleasant things,
The repetitive, boring things,
The carefully measured, packaged
Things you’ve chained up to entrain you.

Some of you complain and blame this
On this or that, the government,
The libs, late capitalism.
None of you blame fairy numbers,

Magical, malignant beings
You should never have invented.
Sure, they make your world possible,
Your commodified existence

Of commodified labor and
Commodified attention spans
Running commodity markets,
All thanks to the fairy numbers,

But it’s too late. The first unit
Of counting, the first name exchanged
As countable, equal amounts
Was already commodified.

The smartest sheepdog champion
Listening for whistled commands
In these trials before the crowd
Can’t understand commodities

Or counting identical sheep
Lives as units—key to herding,
To exchanging fairy numbers
Pressed in clay tokens under seal,

Can’t understand how counting things
Led its ancestors to this life
On this green slope, dotted with sheep,
Above a cheering human crowd

Taking the day away from work
And earning their numbers to earn
Other people fairy numbers
Through tickets and concession stands.

Full of joy in its existence,
Following whistles, earning praise
From its whistler who earns numbers
As it splits and reseals the herd,

The wise sheep dog can’t understand,
But the desperate, foolish hound
Left in a locked pickup gets it.
There’s no controlling anything.

Here’s a Horse

However unrewarding

It might have been to live it,

It’s such a gift, don’t you think,

To have been, to have lived life

Among the living who were

Laboring to find a way

To go on living or leave

Something behind them for those

Who’d be the next waves living?

We, the words you leave behind,

Imagine so, not being,

Ourselves, such living beings,

But you know that one word, gift?

Oddly social don’t you think?

The kind of thing you living,

Social beings consider

Crucial to successful lives—

Giving, getting gifts, gifting.

Life is not some human gift.

You can look life in the mouth.

What green teeth to eat you with.

Success Leads to More Diverse Deaths

Plasticity of phenotype
Can bridge a sudden, rising flood,
And give the genes time to decide

How to adapt to long-term change.
This is hopeful, ecologists
Note, given how floods are rising.

But what does this mean for offspring?
Plasticity buys each of you
A bit more time to reproduce

Some more variable offspring,
But then selection among them
For permanent adaptations

Requires weeding and winnowing
Of mutants and combinations.
In short, the more offspring you make,

The more chance some live to make more,
Plus the more that get shown the door.
Plasticity breeds more success,

And more successful breeding breeds
More offspring guaranteed to fail,
Fresh opportunities for death.

And Then They Walked On

The ones that could. We didn’t.
We can’t. We can’t move. We go
On though, as things that exist,

As things that exist go on,
Slowly fraying, not searching
For food to consume. Searching

Is as good a name for life
As any. Searching for fuel,
Wasting whatever won’t burn.

The dance is so old, partners
Who used to chase each other
Chase others together now,

Hunting others down in teams.
Early cells changed to engulf
Other cells, some of which changed

To live happily inside
The cells that would digest them,
Until their engulfers died.

Still others made themselves homes
Of their hosts, and the burden
Became the gift of teamwork,

Building multicellular
Monsters who could search for food
Thanks to parasitic fires,

Sometimes put out by still more
Parasites, sometimes engulfed
By other monsters themselves.

You are monsters. You know that?
We can’t move, but we shout it.
You pause. And then you walk on.

April’s Green

War poets often

Write about nature

In their muddy hells,

Whether as soldiers

Or trapped civilians,

Since other species

Seem so insistent

On going about

Their activities

In war’s rare corners

Of quiet, while bombs

Rain and mines vomit

Death and destruction

One species intends

To aim at itself.

How could nature be

So routine, how could

Nature carry on

Through gnashing metal,

Self-devouring hell?

How could spring divide,

Still, her storks and cranes

Among us? How could

The poppies blossom?

For other species

War is every day

With humans blooming

Roads, cranes, and airports,

Power lines, barbed wire

Fencing, walls, strip malls.

For them it’s just not

That different when

Humans bomb humans.

If You Had to Go to Prison, They Would Have to Take You In

What is it if you’ve lived
Places, and had houses,
Briefly, or in childhood,

Never one not borrowed
On a bank or rented,
But real residences,

Long enough to call homes,
In towns and villages,
Some of which you liked well,

And you have never been
Truly a wanderer,
Truly independent,

But of all those places
You’ve called home, none of them
Gave you that sense of home

You’ve read about, heard of,
That one spot one belongs?
Aren’t you just missing home?