Misdirection Poem

Someone opened a window
And hauled up blinds that had stayed
Always down for months and years.

The character of the day
Didn’t change in the slightest.
The character of the room

Was transformed into something
That had never existed,
Another room, another

Kind of room. And yes, this room
Was real, before and after.
A real person raised real blinds.

But it was a parable, as well—
The first, more shadowy room,
Metaphor for the unknown,

Second, open-windowed room,
Metaphor for the unknown.
Seems redundant, but it’s not.

The unknown had nothing much
To do with obfuscation,
Nor the known to do with light.

The unknown came with the day
As the day explored each room,
And the unknown never changed.

The Art of Itemizing

Lists are to literary
Culture as bacteria
Are to, well, everything else.

You can scrub your documents
And finish every to-do,
But before long lists will grow.

Search through the earliest lit—
Few poems, a great many lists.
Before you get Gilgamesh,

You get a long list of kings,
Gilgamesh one among them,
No poem yet, just an item.

Offspring of segmentation,
All rhythm’s variation.