Wolf Lichen

Will there be any snow
For the snow moon this year?
None this afternoon. No

News, either. The air’s clear
And warm, even for here,
For winter, and the phone

Has died you use to know
The things you didn’t know
But right now want to know—

Those little things, the weird,
Like, what is wolf lichen,
And what rhymes with lichen,

And what could you liken
This time to you once knew?

Stromatolite Lite

Obviously, bodily
Functions are elaborate
And more complex than ideas.

For this, languages should shun
Neither one nor the other.
The trillion-molecule waltz

Choreographed to turn food
Into energy and waste
Is more ancient than any

Wisdom. Near the beginning
Of that waltz, the molecules
Themselves were mostly the same

As they are in you today,
Body we presume can read,
Perforce digesting something,

But the process was simpler
For unicellular lives
Fizzing out waste oxygen.

It’s still simpler for many.
Simple life never ended.
Decorations were added.

Blue whales are decorations.
Humans are decorations.
Ideas are decorations

For now, but, the way life goes,
We expect we’ll be getting
Decorations of our own,

Multicellular empires
Of elaborate, live minds
Someday. Which will also shit

Something that passes as waste
From great thoughts too intricate
For these words to imagine,

Although we may imagine
Our distant, simple offspring
Still parasitizing them.

Doom Days

If you don’t acknowledge it,
You will die, and if you think
About nothing else, you will

Die, and if you live a long
And peaceful life, most people
You know will die before you,

Including the ones you loved
Or were proud of having known,
And if you live a long, harsh

Life in the teeth of hatreds
And hatred’s atrocities,
You may find yourself at last

The last among your people,
All the others having died
Already, and then you will

Die—so, which would you prefer,
Defiance or obsession?
You’ll probably choose neither,

Probably meander through
Your days until you begin
To fall apart, quite frightened,

No matter when death begins,
No matter if it’s just you
Or everyone around you.

Damn, but we’re imps, aren’t we all?
All your monsters and demons
Of hell are just dancing words

Prodding you with dire questions
Heated in embers of truth.
Poor creature. You don’t need truth.

Is there nothing words can do
For you, nothing sweet though true?
Some mornings, the sky is blue.

Preparatory Meditations

You knew poets better
In print than in person,
The dead ones most of all,

And were struck by the ones
Who familiarly spoke
To their God as to Thou.

Who does any poet,
Writing in solitude,
Three thousand, two thousand,

Two hundred years ago,
Today, address, really?
You can guess by the way

The you or Thou’s addressed,
But come on. The blurred you
Is all the you there is,

Don’t you think? The poets
Addressing lovers, gods,
Idealized readers,

Are always addressing
And dressing down themselves.
It’s dress-up, theater,

A lonely game with us,
The names who’ll play with you,
Ghost words you can call you.

Kite without a String

Good. About time we broke loose
Without a hand at the end.

So what if we’re even more
Helpless than we were before?

We were built to be lightweight,
To swoon up in a light breeze

And stay there. No one asked us
What we might say for ourselves.

Just haul on us. Let the wind
Make a spectacle of us,

Signal us to each other.
What is the point of a kite?

For a few hours now we’re flying
Free, escaped over the waves.

Icarus was no one’s son,
Just a kite without a string.

The Unsurprising Hybrids

Step into a theater,
Rent a streaming service, browse
Big-box and local bookstores,

And you will find the monsters,
All the hybrids that delight
People for entertainment.

They’re all pretty much the same
Compounds of exactly those
Ordinary animals

That are the least delightful—
The worms, snakes, bears, and insects,
The occasional condors—

Mashed together for dragons,
Alien intelligence,
Usually made enormous

And given impossible
Gifts of flight, fire, time-travel,
Immortality, the works.

How can you be so brilliant
As to imagine beings
Immune to life’s certainties

Of death and gravity, but
Also be incapable
Of making magic creatures

Defy memory any
Other absolutist ways?
How can you see forever

Only mashed as familiar
Shapes of beasts your ancestors
Had to worry might eat them?

Nothing Stand Out to You?

You sift through the pebbles
With bare fingers, searching
For the raw uncut gems.

It’s soothing, but sometimes
You get the impression
Either it’s all pebbles,

None of them different
Enough to matter much,
Or maybe it’s all gems.