Beauty, an Invitation

It’s been beaten
By steps alone,
Following steps,

People placing
Shoes and booted
Feet carefully

As they wind through
The rocky scrub
To the lookout.

It’s a footpath,
Although you still
Have to find it,

Search and pick spots
To put a foot
Without twisting

Knee or ankle.
It doesn’t look
That inviting,

Which makes it that
Much more sweet an
Invitation.

Solstices Don’t Depend on Weather

Of course humans won’t survive.
If people grasp anything,
Bodily mortality

Really ought to top the list.
Humans will die, every one,
And people will be replaced,

But the question is will they
Continue to be replaced
By further waves of humans,

Or by less and less human
Descendants, or by nothing
In the human line at all?

That question can’t be answered,
Not by science, not by poems
Cheeky enough to dare ask.

But even a poem can state
One reliable forecast—
Of course humans won’t survive.

Empty Sunny Afternoon

The worst deal with the devil
Is no kind of deal at all,
Which is what all those deals are,

Fantasies there was a deal
Or could be a deal to make.
Sun lights the wall. That’s the deal.

If you can make some music,
Some craft, something out of it,
That’s the deal. If not, that is.

No one’s haunting the workshop.
No one’s down at the crossroads.
No one pays cash for a soul.

The sunlight’s changed its angle.
You deal with it. That’s the deal.

The Future’s Still Haunting Us All

Lightning was not the god.
Lightning is the dragon,
As electricity
Blends a snake with a tree,
Flash coiling and branching
Simultaneously.

People identified
Often with the wrong side,
Or fantasized control
Of the scariest side,
Or made fool assertions
About which side was right.

There are no sides to lightning,
Or infinite sides, waves
Spilling and branching out
In every direction.
There’s a flash, and you’re coiled.
You wave, flash, and you’re gone.