Slow Smokeless

We resemble that remark
Frost made about the wood pile.

Someone who lived in turning
Forgot all our handiwork

And left us, far from useful,
Far from a fireplace, to warm

Our own frozen swamp of sticks
With the slow fire of decay.

So here we are, small words
Stacked in cords, page after page,

Absorbed in our own breakdown,
Bones, like everything cut down

And scattered, stacked, or interred,
Neither living nor inert.

Red Pulseless Planet Never Yearned

The eyes drift back to Mars.
Everything important
Here (go ahead, tell us

What’s important to you,
What draws your attention
Whenever the day ends)

On Earth has been nothing
Of consequence on Mars.
That’s what’s so beautiful.

Aside from the color,
Never mind the closeness,
Relatively speaking,

Or whether it had life
Once, and water, and then
Life itself up and died,

All of the excuses
People make for seeking
To know more about Mars—

The wonder of the place
Is just that none of this
Matters there, none of us.

Flying Words Will Strike You

Languages in such numbers
That they blotted out the sky
Every migration season

Like the passenger pigeons
Notoriously extinct,
That’s the way it was back then

With humans in the billions
Broadcasting words by trillions,
Beams of light carrying them,

Commotion that blocked the stars
And kept the darkness glowing.
But now, of all that, nothing.

The great clouds of languages
And people killed the people
In the end, and the words fell,

Crying out that we can’t cry
Without some weeping humans,
And Earth regained horizons.

In the Land of Wandering

Everyone is going
Without ever moving.
The storms rush overhead.

The wars go on beyond
The glowing horizon.
The light dims and brightens.

The invalid waits up
By the window, wanting
To keep watching, wishing

To stop feeling motion
Sickness from dawn to dusk
And back to dawn again.

Waiting for an ending
Makes a lousy ending.

The Hoarder’s Attic

More late in arriving
Than an Amy Clampitt,
More unknown at death than

Emily Dickinson,
Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Any name that’s now known

Well enough to mention—
We considered the work
But couldn’t quite grant it

Worth our recognition.
Everyone wants to make
The great discovery,

But who can trust themselves
To champion what might
Resist the champion?

Old Notion

Remember sitting on the stones
Warmed by a late summer evening
After a swim in the cold lake,

How the physical bliss made you
Metaphysical to your bones,
The way a drug or drink might do.

When the flesh is that contented,
Who isn’t a philosopher
Of fine, enlightened happiness?

Long views look best when now feels good.
Old ideas get their chance to glow
When the truth feels like something known,

Which would mean it was something old,
Something already understood.

Sapling Tied to a Stake

If being confined
For whatever thing—
Disability,
Injury, cancer,
Prison, quarantine—

Teaches anything,
It’s pay attention
To the view that’s framed,
That’s stationary,
Window-limited.

Even the healthy,
Traveling body
Is a confinement
For the awareness
Inside its carriage.

Of course, things fly in
Through the window or
Shift in the distance.
The fixed perspective
May note many things,

But focus, attend
To the frame. That’s you.
Note you. Importance
Lies within that frame,
Which confines your view.