The Mothers of Prediction

Our false olamic silence
May be truly meaningless
Or conducive to meanings

Unlike any you suggest.
You don’t know. You know you can’t.
No matter how many eyes

You build to open on us,
Careful triangles to catch
Gravity’s all-swallowing

Waves bobbing along with us,
Our spirals burn beyond you
In every sense you create.

You couldn’t cross between us
Without shriveling like flies
Caught in sealed panes of portholes

As you drifted through the dark.
You won’t get too close to us
Without us devouring you,

And you can’t understand us.
But you can watch and listen
And describe us as we go,

Since we are so numerous
That every moment in us
Burns somewhere at this moment.

Hybrid Hunter Monster

Humans and the timber wolves
They encountered in central
Asia had this in common,

A core sort of restlessness
Plus recent, hard selection
To be hardcore generalists.

It was the signal event,
That meeting, the starting gun
For all domestication

To follow, the beginning
Of the end for hominins
As small bands within the world,

Possibly the moment
Migration through north country
Under ice age conditions,

Or nearly, led to spilling
Down through the Americas,
Possibly, too, the moment

Megafaunal extinctions
Began to involve humans.
Aside from speculation,

However, it was something
New in the world—two mammals
Bound by ratcheting culture—

People and their packs of dogs—
Adding, false start by false start,
Domesticated layers,

The bolus of dependence
Of a handful of species
That would take over the world.

You weren’t there, and yet you were.
You and the wolves long before
Had been exploring the world,

Modern-bodied as you are
This moment, talking, hunting.
Then something other was born.

The Clear Dream, Plain as Day

In your last dream before daybreak,
You watch a man in a white moonsuit,
Like an astronaut’s but with a jet pack,

Zoom around underwater in a vast,
Outdoor Olympic swimming pool, while
Ordinary swimmers paddle and splash.

He darts back and forth in the clear
Water over the smooth, pale blue floor,
And you think, just before waking,

Well, isn’t that like us, always entertaining
Ourselves by using prosthetics to look
Up closer at something bare for what

We can plainly see isn’t there, like treasure
Or dragons might pop out, if we stare.

Note to the Society Fellows of Cornell

No crossing without something
To cross—doesn’t matter if
It’s a line, a boundary,

Blank or dark interior,
A demilitarized zone
Or an active combat line,

A person, a social group,
State, or multinational
Corporation. It must be

A presence. It must exist,
Or it must have believers
In its existence, who will

Let you know if you’ve crossed it,
Which is good as crossing them.
Crossing can never happen

Without some ground to be crossed,
Which crossing presupposes.
Here, it gets interesting—

You can posit a crossing
Of phenomena no one
Previously recognized,

Can create phenomena,
Bring things into existence,
Into human awareness,

By purporting to cross them,
By announcing intentions
To cross them, then attempting.

Likewise, ordinary change,
Unremarkable motions,
Can be found to be crossings

As soon as someone cries out
That you are now crossing them,
Their line, their interior,

Some thing in positive space
Or some imagined threshold—
You’ve crossed it, if they say so.

So go ahead, study it.
Elaborate scholarship
On crossing. That’s crossing it.

The Puzzled Skull

Blue days, plain nights,
Black tea phrases
Get into you,
The sight of mice

On sphagnum moss,
Fragile corpses
On future peat
That won’t decay.

But the raven
Eats them first. Strange
How the words fall
In you reversed,

You, the frail skull,
We, phenolic
Words that will keep
What’s left in us.

Respiring Sighs of Methuselahs

Even multimillenial pines
Must practice cellular maintenance
Moment by moment, thousands of years.

Reverse-senescent black marsh turtles,
Who grow only more robust with age,
Will die if they’re too badly injured.

Even immortals would need repairs.
There’s no getting around fixing things,
Except by getting out of living.