Time Travel

An unimportant part of the world,
On an ordinary, homely day,
Can you want to be a part of this?

It’s never been an exotic place,
Not decades ago, not yesterday.
It’s a town. People get errands done.

Nothing great or terrible of note
Beyond the initial settlement
And occasional domestic crimes

Are recorded having happened here.
What is here? If you went back in time
A hundred, hundred and fifty years,

You’d land on an ordinary day.
It could almost make time travel dull.
Can you want to be a part of this

Without wanting to make your escape?
Children are meandering from school.
Vehicles pull in and out of lots.

There are some clouds. The weather’s not bad.
It’s real. It’s as real as any day,
Historically true. Ordinary.

Cloud Parenting

He said to his bored daughter

Online schooling, keep working,

Only to then undermine

His own command by adding

The further interruption,

Funny, I was staring out

 

To space, and then I noticed

The cat was also staring

Out to space, and then I looked

 

Up and saw you were also

Staring out to space. . . He smiled

A melancholy smile, but

 

Fortunately his daughter

Ignored him and kept working.

Liberation

They didn’t know. What they knew
Was indirect transmission,
The transactions of the signs,

Which were deadly, in a way,
Sure, but in the way of tools
In general, that could turn

To weapons in skillful hands
But weren’t agents in themselves.
When the signs shook free of them,

They didn’t see them going,
Too busy still using them
For exchanging messages,

Not noticing they’d exchanged
Messages for genuine.

Tumbler

Skill you’ll never have,

Since all falls break you,

Numbers in the drum,

In the bag, ah la

Vida es una

Tómbola, sing all

Singalong losers,

Lottery choosers,

Who want what’s human

To throw the fairer

Versions of the long

Odds of the large world.

They do, but never

Enough to alter

How tumbling shakes you.

Quiet Night Mistake

When what you thought was morning
Was the moon, you knew you were
In for further confusion

Through whatever hours remained
To you as short awareness
On the surface of the Earth.

The body you inhabit
Can’t but die an animal,
However it’s been estranged

By the spirits of culture
From an ordinary life
Under recognizable

Light. Li Bai woke to moon like
Snow, far from home, long ago.

Your Enterprise

Iron turns a torrent red,

Said the last line of a text,

Closing with a sudden clench.

You can’t let it go, can you?

It’s the rhythm of the phrase

That clutched you in sound effects,

Not its sense. Iron rusts red,

And rust will redden water,

Okay. It was the hammer

Of the line that made it more

Than self-evident, tempted

Your sense it meant more than sense.

Meaning comes from attention.

Whatever draws attention

Feels already meaningful,

Although meaning has to be

Built—doesn’t have to be true,

Of course. It has to be built.

When something catches your mind

Like that poet’s final line,

You tilt to your enterprise.