What’s Next Is Also Past

It went on. Nothing much clenched
In dread anticipation
Way back then, but it went on.

Two patterns, especially,
Remained reliably fixed—
No matter what you dreaded

Or how much, it came and went,
And then it went on. And then,
Fresh anxieties moved in.

That was it. But when you looked,
All you had of dread was past.
It went on, and all of it past.

Do Not Risk Closing Your Eyes

Dozed into a dream someone
Recently deceased argued
With a more senior lost soul

That this couldn’t be the place—
Then things disintegrated,
Not into waking, into

The next dream, people chatting
About the previous dream
In which you were painting and

The painting was of a boat
The point of which was to float
Away from all these faces

But now the boat is crowded
And new dreamers float new dreams.

Of Memories

Peace recently located,
Or relocated perhaps,
To an easy-to-find place—

Only requires accepting,
Fully, truly accepting,
That how this turns out for you

Will never matter for you.
Can you embrace that absence?
It’s not just you don’t matter—

It’s not all wise perspective.
You can’t possibly matter
To your disappearing self,

So let yourself disappear.
It’s all always behind you.
Of what could you feel afraid?

Drift

It’s already done.
Let go of the ropes.
Feel the way your boat

Rocks back and forth
But floats. Will you coast
Out of the harbor?

Go so far as half
Way through the Bay,
Then sink forever?

Given it’s matter,
It doesn’t matter.
Mattering is for

Precisely those things
Immaterial,
For which meanings are

Created so that
They can be proclaimed
To really matter.

Course Correction

There’s no formula for it,

That’s for sure, and who could say

Whether the person one meant

To receive the formula

Were not, in fact, the starter

Kit for the peculiar script

Any such formula would need

To enact? You bump down the road.

There’s a little road through the woods,

A two-track rut into grey scrub

That you turn left to bump onto.

The woods are the ones that greeted

Bishop on her chemin de fer—

Impoverished scrub pine and oak—

You won’t get out of them without

Some pleasantries from the hermit,

And if you get lost arriving,

Remember, there’s no formula—

There might be an alligator

Or startled swamp deer.

There might be some tattered pages

That seem to contain corrections. . .

What the Fish Spell

They will not wait.
They will not happen.
They happen.
They have happened.

Will they happen?
If they are at all
They will have happened—

The most solid existence
Anyone’s accorded
Within this happened.

Everything you can be
Or be aware of is among
The things that happened.

Linny’s tragic, scrawny story
Doesn’t yet exist— hasn’t
Happened yet, then, has it?

Hasn’t had been, hasn’t been yet,
Has it? Linny’s story—how soon
Can it have happened?

Can it have happened?
Wait—did the girl who crouched
Here happen?