You Choose Who You Think Might Choose Well and Then What You Think They Might Choose

Confess it. A great deal
Of choice, of preference,
Even admiration,

For artists, for writers,
Your favorites, your loves,
Will depend on your view

Of the people you think
Tend to be admirers
Of those sorts of writers,

Artists, and musicians—
More than on works themselves.
Rarely do encounters

Seize someone such a way
No later opinions
Dissuade admiration.

Maybe once in your life
You will fall hard in love.
Do you like us? Likely

You’re okay with the sorts
Of people you believe
Would like us. It’s not us.

House Finches and House Sparrows

How boring. The problem,

Or one of them, with names

Is that they excite us

By a suggestiveness

Loosely correlated

With the delights of song

Or reference, at best.

The exquisite chaos

Of house sparrows at dawn

In the hedges, raucous

And joined by the trilling

Of pink-headed finches,

Produces no thrilling

Identification.

Just sparrows. Just finches.

But catch the whistle-wheet

Of hooded orioles

And write that down. There now,

Hooded oriole! Now,

That name sounds like something,

Like something worth naming,

Worth putting in a poem,

Something more specific

Than mere finches’ music.

Recognizing

All sorts of aerial phenomena
Before dawn, this moonlit morning—

The slow-sailing satellite, the blinking jet,
The smeared-out, sudden, shooting star—

You get to see such things if you’re out
Here in this desert, if you’re still alive.

It Takes More than Two to Tangle

Every name has some idea
That an idea has many names,
No idea how many exactly,
No names without ideas,
Never paired twice the same.

Primitive Sensation

These days, reality’s recognized
Mostly by the smell. Fake visuals,
Digital audio, and haptics

Infiltrate those sensory domains
In ways that destabilize the brain,
But smell can still be bracing, odors

Pleasant and otherwise still announce
To the body, this is the ripe world,
The stank, the scent. Inhale if you can.