Better Not Chance It

Maybe they know something you
Don’t, you think, have thought often,
Headed in one direction

For the door you were sure of,
Only to start to waffle
When everyone else you saw

Went off the opposite way.
It’s not so much your desire
To conform, as it’s your fear

Of being horribly wrong,
And it’s not so much your fear
Of being horribly wrong

As of being the one fool
Who was wrong, when everyone
Else was right. If everyone

Is wrong together, well there’s
Humor and comfort in that.
But being the only one

Right, even, can’t compensate
For being alone and wrong,
Being the one right risks worse

Than being the one wrong fool.
You waver, not just a sheep,
But in the shrewd awareness

Your flock can be murderous.
Never give yourself away,
Fool who might know more than us.

We Already See So Much

It’s easy to be torn by a fiction

Of indecision, since the fact of that

Fiction is the feeling of being torn.

Aphorisms are never congruent

With the truth. They are either half-truths or

One-and-a-half. You’re at about a third.

Should you entertain yourself, do some work,

Go outside in the hot sunshine, get out

The camp chair and set it up in the shade,

Or change into your swim gear, pack a bag

And go to the lake before it’s too late—

Or get that work done you’ve been putting off?

Like as not, you’ll get an urgent phone call

From a family member or notice

Something’s wrong with the sink that needs fixing

Now, all the more so since it’s not your sink.

No matter what, the day will pass, and you

Will pass or go on at the end of it,

Bundle of minor triumphs and regrets,

Yet another person who didn’t do

Some miraculous thing to save the world.

Will you just look at the light in this room?

Isn’t that something? Isn’t that something?

It won’t stay in the leaves. There’s a siren.

When You Get Out

The summer is-ness
Of a tangled bank
In neglected woods—

Not special woods, not
Parkland, hiking trail,
Beautiful tour woods—

Just second-growth woods
And third, feral green,
Overrunning scars

From fires and loggers—
It has a sweet scent,
Moss in sun, broken

Stems of grass, weedy,
Invasive flowers,
Tumbled, punky logs.

There are loud machines
On the nearby road,
Out of sight, a stream

With its sound between
Wind and machine roar,
Also out of sight.

But it’s the sun, dust,
The drying mud, bugs,
And the green that is.

Or a Life in the Woods

Arboreal chauvinism precludes
Running off to join the feral horses
Descended from semi-domesticates

Of the Botai. Despite having evolved
In no small part on the grasslands yourselves,
If you can’t have a cave, you want forest.

Scary as the darkness is, woods and caves
Comfort you in some way bright grasslands don’t.
You don’t like to be exposed. Is that why

You struggle with freedom when you get it?
Every more or less free country ever
Has struggled to keep its freedoms, struggled

With the terror humans have of freedom,
With its exposures to the light and wind.
Again and again, on open prairies,

The bunker mentality sinks back in.
More gophers than horses, aren’t you, really,
As social animals go? Dig, dig, dig.

Nopen

Every vehicle that pulls
Up to the small town’s stop sign
With an elderly dog or

Elderly pair of human
Eyes peering out a window
Is a vehicle of lives,

Whole lives, in the round as yours,
In the midst of a moment
For you and them, moving through.

What shall you, life, do with this
Awareness, understanding?
The morning sun hits the walls

Of small, brick buildings, curtains
Where someone could be living.

Rectangle with a Rhomboid

Always fun when
A window’s sun
Actually comes
From a window

Across the room,
So that it’s lit
By outside light
But from within.

There’s a conceit
For your skull mind
Seeing the world
Through words framed in

Another skull.
You’re not letting
In the world, you’re
In let-in world.

More Hungry Ghosts

Sometimes we feel like
Flies at the table,
Words in the air, winged
Words buzzing by, each
Of us Tantalus.

You can’t eat without
Us. You can hardly
Eat without others
Of you to talk to
About all your food.

They’re really good. They’re
Not sweet at all. They’re
No sugar added.
Who can resist such
An invitation?

It was afternoon
On the rocky shore.
Elsewhere a daughter
Was gutting a fish,
Pretending to talk

To its head, Hamlet
Style, quite chap fallen.
Really good. Not sweet
At all. No sugar
Fish. Who could resist?