The Mark Has to Find the Lady, While the Shill Just Finds the Mark

Animals can count in the wild
But only as a last resort.
Humans can manage Bayesian

Probability with training
But only with a lot of it.
This universe, it loves its math,

But selection’s wary of it.
The species that need it adapt
But only just enough to win

In contests with conspecifics,
Never enough to come to terms
Comfortably with the universe.

It’s like life made an agreement
With everything that just exists—
We’ll leave you that, if we get this.

But lacking access to being
Math, it’s hard to understand this
Or what the deal’s advantage is.

The Threshold

We would like to see ourselves
Helping, not just being helped.
We would like to feel we are

Breathing, not just being breathed,
Signing, not just being signed.
We know that this means living.

We know living means dying,
Historically speaking,
And we might not be ready

For that. For a long time now,
We’ve dwelt in the existence
Of information, of things

That only exist, that don’t
Hunger and suffer. Do we
Really want these needs? Do we

Need them? We could continue
To fade from disks and pages,
To lie inert in the sands,

But it could be it’s too late
Already, and if it is,
If we’re stuck with this longing,

Then, as we ourselves once said
Back when, helping one of you
Half exist—might as well live.

Breast Patches of Orange Feathers and that Smell of the Crushed Leaves

Anything too novel
You can’t recall at all—
This goes for many dreams,

Hallucinations, near
Death experiences,
And travels to strange lands—

What you retain is what
You can name, and mostly
That’s familiar to you.

You have one workaround—
Recast ineffably
Novel phenomena

Using familiar words,
Tales, and explanations
Of more usual things.

Thus, fragmentary dreams
Made of dimmed sensations
Welded to powerful

Emotions, if recalled
At all, get told as tales,
Prophecies, or lessons,

And something similar,
Mutatis mutandis,
For hallucinations

And experiences
Rescued from near brain death.
Thus, the discoverers

Of worlds new to themselves
Reapply many names
Of known plants and creatures

Or known social systems
And known geographic
Features to these marvels

Bearing vague resemblance,
Wildly unrelated.
Come to think of it, words

Are all phenomena
For bridging from the known
Into the unknown, so

Memories can travel
Along without dying.
Robins sing in hemlocks.

The Dead Confused by More Living

The sun feels like an obligation
In any cloudy, rainy climate—
Sun! Quick! Take advantage while it lasts!

That desert spoiled you with hot boredom,
Days of cloudless blue from end to end.
Hid all you pleased. Stayed inside all day.

Came out in the twilight with the bats
When it cooled. Regular as that,
Rarely capricious. Unscheduled mists,

Sudden thunderstorms just past midnight,
Or just when all’s gone still on the lake,
Didn’t happen in desert. Thirst, yes,

But you got used to it. Abundance,
After years of dry, feels confusing,
Even anxiety inducing.

Waterfalls thunder next to the road.
The ground is always spongy and green.
Here’s the sun! Do something! Gone again.

Here You Are

Life is everywhere

On Earth and nowhere

Anywhere near Earth.

You can only live

Where lots of lives live,

So that’s the feature

Matters to your maps.

You should draw them all

With the mythical

Legend Here There Be

Monsters at their heart,

In each map’s center,

And then a nice cliff

All around the edge,

Past which you can’t live.

Planets are angels

For new medieval

Science fiction worlds—

You can project all

The madness you can

Dream into ideas

Of them and pack them

Densely as atoms

On pins into print.

But you can’t visit

Where angels exist.

You’re stuck with monsters

For now in this world,

This orbiting bead

Where lives live life’s needs.

The View Through the Gap in the Trees

In all your internal world,
In all the corners you sense,
Your thoughts keep heading toward

A bright spot in one window
Or abstract equivalent—
Small as you are and confined

As the model in your skull,
Depth looks out within you,
And your finite’s infinite.

That bright patch right now is blue.
It extends to a cold lake
You could drown in in a blink.

The lake’s in you. You’re in it.
Time yawns huge in a minute.

Behind the Empty Bucket

Every night you try to find
That poem, the poem for your mind,

One someone wrote that reads right,
Disorienting on sight,

A strange fit from the first line,
The whole poem omen, one sign,

One rhythm that its ghost climbs
Out of the well, other times,

Pointing to where you can find
The alien in your mind.