Plain Deeds of Complex Characters

So many grey tints, so much

Moral ambiguity,

Such fine chiaroscuro,

It’s obligatory now—

If you like a character,

Enjoy the fiction it’s in,

Want to praise the story told,

You must emphasize the lack

Of black hats and of white hats,

Virtue without villainy,

Villainy without virtue.

Back stories for everyone,

For every sin some reason,

Sad shadows for every saint.

This is what’s realistic,

And certainly the actors

Of the human world

Mix. Not always the actions.

Lay Terms

The laity are no longer

Aware of being laity,

Many never were, and the term

Lay terms would be obscure to them.

Say plain language, say regular

Speech, instead, or something like that.

Math is now the priest tongue proper,

Trickier to translate than verse,

Than allegorical visions,

The dactyls of Parmenides

Building the absence they denied,

Opinion, which didn’t survive,

Trickier to explain than God,

Who after all could be remade,

And was, to taste, by each new faith.

Axioms may be forever

Incomplete, but there’s no turning

Pure mathematics back to scratch,

Claiming some new dispensation,

New visions erasing priors.

It doesn’t work like that. No one

Can tell a cosmologist where

To get off who isn’t fluent

In math’s sacred lingua franca.

How would you put that in lay terms,

Precision lost in translation?

Mathematicians need nothing

To show how no one knows nothing.

More Latitude You Could Use

People are much freer than they imagine

You find out how far out

You can go by going,

But more often you find

Out just by starting out

Far off the mark, wishing

You could be in the thick

Of what others are doing,

But you’re stuck, but you stick

It out where you are, far

From your generation,

If there’s any such thing,

Far for certain from things

You watch and read, learning

There’s no road you can reach

That leads from you to them.

It dawns on you there is

A road, and you’re sitting

Beside it every day,

But it’s the road that leads

Away. It’s longitude

Not latitude you change.

Haven Also Means Harbor

Being far away from everyone
Else never protected anyone
Forever and many not very

Long. Tasmania, Easter Island,
Nunavut, Tierra del Fuego—
Anywhere humans could get, humans

Could follow them. Even Amundsen
Barely planted his black flag
Before Scott and his sleds came along,

And the planet’s much, much smaller now.
Where do you think you’re going to hide?
The way to get away from people

Is to be no one living nowhere
Anyone else might find intriguing,
Hoping no one stumbles over you.

The Work of a Fox

Brush across the snow
No need for nine
One will do

Parallel
Predatory
Omnivore to you

Something mystical
Superhuman
In a fox

And for what
For outwitting
Humans now and then?

Foxes are hidden
Burrowed meanings
Attend well

To find them
Counter crafters
Poets and women

Noblemen hunt them
Farmers dread them
You’ll know when