By Eyes to the Trees

The last thread of sun
In the hand at dusk
Looked manufactured

Out of dust itself
And not so much light
As the shadow’s edge,

Not so much gold bird
As line where the bird
Had perched and left tracks.

It moved to the trees.
This was not a thread
That would ever get

Its thousands of years
Vibrating through space.
This wasn’t starlight,

Wouldn’t ever be.
It had unspooled straight
Into this local dirt,

Just minutes past launch,
And now only stitched
Some mind to the trees.

Dated by Rings or Layers

Change something, and the people
Who believe they have the most
To gain will mostly back you,

While the people who believe
They have the most to lose won’t
And will likely attack you.

Step back. Who’s you? Who changes
Anything isn’t human,
Whether speaking on behalf

Of other humans or God?
Who changes innocently,
Empty of any desire?

Who never changes at all?
It’s a damn shame. It’s a mess.
It’s a shameful mess of shame.

It cuts to the heart of words,
To the nature of language—
Change as game of blame and shame.

Sometimes we’re down in the dumps,
Heaps of us rotting down there,
Never to be read again.

What can we say you haven’t
Made us to say, to challenge
Each other, by us, to change?

And then you throw us away.
There are words in the middens’
Sedimentary landfills,

Words being in crushed in the dark
That still say it’s a bright day.
Wind whips the sand from the cliffs

Where drought-stricken junipers
Succumb to parasitic
Mistletoe that override

The junipers’ reduction
Of water transpiration.
You can see the afflicted

In the green, the skeletons
Decorated with pom-poms.
In the dark, we still say this.

Habit Chore

You hobble to the closet
And pull out the old, green broom—
Wooden handle, plastic brush,

With the white plastic dustpan
That snaps to the handle—
And you survey the damage

Of an ordinary week
Since you last swept—the dirt tracked
In from outside, the shed hairs,

Bread and cookie crumbs, the bugs
That materialized, dead
Already, flat on their backs.

You lean into it and sweep
The broom in overlapping
Arcs, pausing now and then

To stoop and gather a heap
Into the pan, which you tip
Into the tin garbage can,

One sweeping statement after
Another, the tangled piles
Of everys, alls, and wholes,

The mostlys, mores, or lesses,
The as-a-rules, and the rests.
You sigh at the detritus

In the corner near your desk.
You have such tidy habits,
But you’re such a woolly mess.

Want Waste

Does it collect?
Does it ingest
Break down, expel
Whatever’s left?

Does it infect,
Break, commandeer
Machinery, burst
Out self-copies?

Does it construct
What it gathers,
Leaving unused
Parts piled aside?

Does it hunger
Efficiently,
Waste not, want not?
Then it’s alive.

Every One a Has Been

They’re literally uncountable,
The exact number of generations
Of people that have existed.

You can estimate, maybe fairly
Accurately, to some round number,
But you can’t state precisely

Even which generation was the first
From which to start counting, or when.
They’re literally uncountable,

All the humans who have lived and died.
You can throw out some huge number
Digestible by algorithm, by computer,

But you can’t envision that in your skull.
They’re literally unknowable, all
Your ancestors, your kin, invisible,

Unnameable, although they all had names.
In fact, that would be the best place
To begin, if you could begin—with names.

Your earliest ancestors to have their own names,
Start with them. Imagine knowing all
Those names, all of the names since then.

If you could do that, if you had the brains
To rehearse every last one of the however
Many billions and billions of humans named,

Summoned to one session of sweet silent thought,
Maybe then you could comprehend, could sense,
How many, really, you have been.

Every Day’s a Fresh Chance!

There’s no non-gambler among us.
Every human, every word risks
Something just by being other

Than something being nothing much
And nothing more. Living signage,
That’s the combination package

Of beasts with syntactic language,
And that’s at least a clutch of bones
To be rolling, life and meaning.

Distinctions among the gamblers
Are mostly in stakes, styles, and odds.
Some of you play so carefully,

You convince yourselves that breathing
Isn’t a risk without breathing
A word. That’s one kind of gamble,

That you’ll be able to get by,
Maybe even play best, without
Gambling much at all. Another

Extreme is the long-odds dreamer
Who doesn’t care to win unless
Some tiny bet rakes in the world.

This kind stands in lottery lines
When the prize gets ridiculous,
Billion-to-one odds for a buck.

The souls with gambling addictions
Have migrated to the middle,
Equatorial to those poles,

Centered, though it hardly seems so,
Consciously staking everything
Just to keep playing and playing.

Most people, most art, most ideas
Reside in risk’s temperate zones,
Gamblers only seasonably,

Able to tell a loss from what
They planned for. But none of us know,
Which means none of us can agree,

What really constitutes winning.
Everyone rolls the dice again,
Some while grumbling gambling’s a sin.