Is Foul and Foul Is

It’s funny fair
Plays such a role
In sporting worlds,
Given the world

Is anything
But fair, and sports,
Which measure strength,
Agility,

Et cetera,
Seek to compare
As exactly
As possible

Embodied gifts
Of unfairness.
You crave lines drawn
Where bodies fall.

But Are You

You can’t go with you.
Your whole life you sense
It all come and go,
And you come and go,
But always with you.

You sleep and you go.
You wake and return,
And always something
Else has come or gone
For good, but not you.

When you go for good,
However slowly,
However quickly,
In an accident,
Incident, or age,

You won’t go. You’re gone.
You’ll be gone by then.
You were the word you,
The mark in the brain,
Current eddying.

We are what you are.
It’s us what made you.
You’re thought stabilized
By recurring terms
That talk to ourselves.

Where Were We

It all counts, but you keep getting lost
In the forest of scale, dizzying
Zooms from twig tips smack into the trunks,

And then there’s the leaves on those branches,
No, the leaves in the mulch, no, the roots,
The mycelial threads connecting

Through all the exchanges, the breathing,
And did we mention the various
Birds, mammals, what about the insects,

And look, here’s the blizzard snapping oaks,
No, it’s wildfire season, and all’s lost,
And now it’s skeletons under stars.

It mattered. You could see it mattered,
But you could never hold focus well.
It all mattered. You mattered as well.

An Hour’s Bright Thought in the Dust

Sun on a matte plane, such as
A parked car’s dash, caked in dust—
That’s what your thoughts mean to us.

You’re the stove, the heat and light.
At times, you scorch or blind us,
But then you crash land just so

And sprawl out for our glad eyes.
We know it’s not you we see,
And we know you don’t own us,

But there’s this fine calm that falls
That is warm and bright, yet not
To do with us, and far less

Than the rest of what you are.
We’re your words, then, your thoughts ours.

Abstractions Realer than Dragons

Abstractions are more
Imaginative
Than vivid pictures,
Concrete images—
Memory’s palettes

Allow descriptions
More brightly alive,
But you can’t describe
The unseen as if
You see it, unless

You blend and conjure
Pictures of what’s been
Already in brains.
Yet, you can blandly
State impossible

Abstractions no one’s
Ever encountered,
And people will get
Some clue what you mean—
Immortality,

Divinity, null,
Peace, infinity—
Say those and you have
Created nevers,
Dragons from nothing.

In Orbit All the Time

Is it not pleasing to look
Up from any spot on Earth
And have a straight line of sight

To the most distant place reached
By any human being,
Any ape, any mammal,

Any breathing animal?
Anywhere and any time
You can see the moon, you can

Look straight at the furthest point
Any traveler’s set foot.
You can look right at it. You.

If the Switch Works

Like a small lamp
On a dark night,
Is a rare joy
In a bleak text

Worth more, more true,
For being rare
And small against
Its dark context?

The Fool in Lear,
Is he truly
Sweet, on that heath?
Sometimes it seems

Like the small joke
In a grim plot
Is the darkest.
Still, you’ll keep it.