Never a Dull Moment of Conception

It’s so hard to glimpse how significance
Fits into the apparently signless

Universe. Taxonomies of meaning
Would likely swell with human intentions,

Animal as social signifiers
For winning more resources and status,

Adding subsets for manipulation
And some others for cooperation,

In which case, significance would amount
To one more evolved fitness strategy,

Taken to the extreme in this species.
How does this blossom? There’s no certain code

By which meanings can become meaningful,
Past such survival and reproduction

As are generated by social skills
Which can pay out as fitness dividends.

Of the lineages, social circles,
And individuals with fitness skin

In the game of a single pregnancy,
How is it contesting interests lead

To metaphysically meaningful
Questions about what independence is,

Whether souls exist, when does life begin,
Whether bodies gestating new bodies

Within them count as one or two persons?
At some level of abstraction, meaning

Seems to bloom significance by the means
Of bootstrapping parthenogenesis,

Bringing new meanings into existence,
But it’s never clear where that threshold lives.

If Meaning Means Anything

A giant pollen spiral
Circles its gold-green spit curl
In the middle of the waves.

The pattern didn’t exist
Out there just moments ago,
But wind tugged coincidence,

And spirals spin everywhere,
Like clues to the universe,
In pollen, galaxies, caves.

Do you begin to suspect
That either it’s all meaning,
Or not even meaning is?

Snags and Sweepers

Someone walks over in a storm,

Wind whipping the branches, to talk

About the larches near the house,

How, if they fell, they’d break your roof.

Rain spattering him, he clomps off

To study the chances of snags.

Not his trees, not his roof, not yours,

Except in that you’ve borrowed this

For a few months’ summer shelter.

From the back window, you can watch

Him studying the swaying trunks

For the excitement, as he said,

And you can see down to the lake

Now lined with fine white, curly waves,

But up here you’re too far to spot

Fresh shoreline sweepers you’ll swim past.

By the Lack of Comparisons

Robins, then a Swainson’s thrush
With its rising, three-part trill
That trails off like an echo,

Greet the cloudy, high summer
Morning in the conifers.
Once a few warblers join in,

The whole chorus obliges
You to re-remind yourself
This is fortunate to hear,

Even in passing, even
Not being able to stay,
Sojourner for a summer,

You, temporary renter
Of an insecure moment,
Lucky you’re able to hear.

When the chorus hits a lull,
There’s just the slight hum of house,
And, admit it, you’re relieved.

Skin of the Waves

Humans are working
On so many things—
So many humans,

So many topics,
Lives dedicated
To this or that thing,

Decades spent working
Deep in one corner
Of some one puzzle,

How to sell some things,
How to ship others,
How to box better,

How to measure Earth,
Earth’s spin, Earth’s life forms,
The shape of the light,

Light’s entanglements,
How to use data,
Giant data sets,

How to build a mind
That can be working
Faster than humans

On many more things.
Sit in bed some night
And feel yourself float,

Phosphorescent speck
In a sea searching
By phosphorescing.

Might As Well Sit

Life’s lots of dodging
Until you get hit.

Planning is dodging.
Love is. Eating is.

Those most fortunate
Get imitated,

But imitation
Has many limits.

You can’t imitate
All variables.

You can’t imitate
Coincidences.

You should wish you could
Be a statistic.

Try to be quicker
Or slower, that’s fine.

Try to live just right
Or to hell with it.

It’s not you. It’s not
Your shit decisions.

You’re not out of time.
Time tagged you. You’re it.

In There Somewhere

Most great writing’s frankly awful.
It’s only not being always awful
That makes great writing truly great.

Literature’s like all the rest
Of existence—mostly the same,
A few bolts of lightning thrown in.

A great story has its moments,
A few great moments, all it needs.
A few enduring lines make a poet—

A few hundred make a Shakespeare.
To last for centuries takes luck
And a memorable monster.