The Tertiary Heartbeat

It doesn’t whump
Bump, whump bump. It
Doesn’t click, tick.

It’s not clockwork,
Not digital,
Not atomic.

It doesn’t spin.
It’s not music.
It’s not tactile,

It’s just tacit.
You can’t sense it.
It’s gravity—

Not the local
Variety,
Not Earth clutching

You in this rip
Tide you wade through,
But those long waves

You float that you
Don’t notice pull
As they pulse through.

She Lived in the Past

Which she thought of
As the present,
Which she thought of

As that part of
The future that
She could see, which

Didn’t include
Any future
Without those words,

Present and past
And future, which
She thought of, since

Those were present
In her language
In which she lived.

The Lyric of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Hamlet without haunting dreams
Rules inside a nutshell now.

He has painted one lid blue,
Black with stars the other. Peace

Greets him from infinite space,
Wherever he looks. He sleeps

Like a hibernating bear,
Tardigrade withdrawn to tun,

Sealed up all in rest. The wind
Poisons the world above him.

Quietude is his revenge,
Quietism’s dreamlessness

In a shallow bed of clay,
Bolthole for another day.

Sunny Morning

Experiencing

What’s new gone, the light,

The Ashbery poem

Someone thrust at you,

While the cat cleaned tail

And the orange peels

Still wafted citrus,

Another poet

Explained, whenever

A peculiar fact

Triggers a poem, most

Of what I’ll need is

There where I stumbled

On it. If questions

Arise, Google is

Awfully handy.

If experience

Of the sun, poem, cat,

Pungent orange peels,

Printed interviews,

A quiet morning

In a broken frame,

Triggers poetry,

Most of what you’ll need

Wants to know, for what?

To pay attention

To what’s up ahead,

Explained Ashbery,

As unhelpfully

As always, now dead.

Conversion

Sun’s down. Day’s converting
Into night. Conversion
Is a good word for loss.

Life is any matter
Pursuing conversion,
Converting what it takes

To what it is and waste,
Which it converts to what
It isn’t anymore.

Let us turn together.
Death is just conversion
That results in bodies

No longer converting
Anything on their own.
Life’s the missionary

Hunger. On the other
Side of life, mere being
Doesn’t proselytize.

Day’s converted to night.
Night converts back to day.
Only more past is gained.