So Long As Light Never Washed It Out

The Messiah, or, at any rate
The first credible, working model,
Showed up looking like God’s silhouette,

If God cast a shadow like an oak
In winter with a giant angel
Roosting broodily in its branches.

No one knew quite what to do with this.
Assumptions had been the Messiah
Would turn up in the form of a man,

Not some monstrous shadow with no source.
This Messiah, or, at any rate,
The silhouette people came to call

Their Messiah, got down to business,
Shadow flailing its wings and branches,
Gesticulating as if wind-blown,

And people started pilgrimages,
As people have always longed to do—
Escape, see the world, become transformed,

Bring back a medallion of some sort,
Some good stories got along the way—
And pretty soon the shadow had them

Eating out of its messianic
Implications of the world’s demise,
Escape, transformation of some sort,

Which was, in fact, the transformation
In itself, from a world of waiting
For a Messiah to come along

To a world where the Messiah was
An institutionalized shadow,
Entrancing when gesticulating.

Recently

No guru is likely
To write a bestseller
Titled The Power of

Recently. Recently
Is as close as you’ll get
To life in the present.

Might as well savor it.
Recently, the clouds raced
Like a quiet stampede,

And the trees waved their leaves,
And the body gurgled
Like a happy baby,

And the compressor hummed
From the empty kitchen.
Just recently, you sat

In your battered rocker
And thought, Now what is this?
But it was already,

Before you noticed it,
Which hasn’t stopped you yet
From repeating, Now what?

Turns

Most change that isn’t boring
Is painful, scary, or both,
But still, most change is boring,

Which inevitably leads
To temptation to want change,
More dramatic change, faster,

And to fantasies of how
Life could change for the better,
Which it could, and sometimes does,

Although most change that isn’t
Boring as clocks and daylight,
Turns scary, painful, or both.

Inestimable Worth

What’s the exact tie between

Meaning and value? Something

In which you have invested

Meaning has value to you,

But you may well understand

That value as personal,

Hazily non-fungible,

Meaningful only to you,

A sentimental value.

What if you are meaningful?

If many people see you

As having been important,

Items to which you attach

No value, but that are yours,

Associated with you,

Can be valued, tradeable,

To the point of capital.

Information, nonetheless,

Like implication, differs

From meaning’s value.

Information has its own

Fluctuating capital,

Not the same as a keepsake,

Something that’s held dear, precious.

So, we’re not any closer,

Really, to understanding,

How much value meaning makes,

If value scales with meaning,

And how much motivation

Can measure meaning’s value.

Nothing Exists Alone

The unnatural
Never was other
Than linguistical.

Once there was nature
Among the labels,
Then unnatural

Was easily made
Meaningful, even
Inevitable,

And nature never
Could have stood alone.
There’s an itchy world

Among the spinning
Splatter of this star,
Skinned in its twitching

Hungers, but is it
The one and only
Hunger of its kind?

It isn’t nothing,
And none of it is,
Except by naming,

Unnatural, so,
No. Lonely, maybe,
But never alone.