Poem at High Pond

Art makes its worlds by choosing,
Which always means excluding.
There’s no choice but selecting

By some criterion, some
Mechanism. Small cut-outs,
No matter how rich the art,

How layered in human pain,
How deep in the cave, how high
In the cliffs where the small pond

Has waited, accepting rain
After the snowmelt vanished,
Exactly the way a god

Accepts food at an altar,
Passively, without a choice,
But scrutinized by people

Who want badly to believe
It matters how well they care
For their high pond, their altar.

Like the Sun Never Sets, This Desert

Rattlesnake crossing hot tar,

Red-tailed hawk circling blank sky,

Cashier and a customer

Are talking at the Walgreens

On State St. The Queen’s dying.

Yeh, must be. The family’s

All there. That gives it away.

‘Cept Harry. Never should have

Married Meghan. Feel sorry

For him. Nah, he only got

What he deserved. Serves him right.

Need your receipt? Nah, keep it.

Lanky customer shuffles out.

Short cashier sighs, takes the next.

Amoralogical

Decry invasions,
But what do you make
Of little eagles

That flew themselves east
To reach New Zealand
And then swiftly grew

To huge predators,
Fattened on flightless
Moa, just to lose

Out themselves later,
When humans showed up
Double-hulled to kill

Those moa faster?
What of the failed waves
Of introduced hares,

Domesticated
Floppy-eared bunnies
That didn’t escape

To successfully
Invade Australia,
Source of those eagles

That once invaded
Aotearoa,
But just five females

With gene variants
From wild admixtures
In domesticates

Produced all feral
Rabbits infamous
For their invasion

In one great, grey wave
Of coneys across
Australia’s landscapes?

Earth’s a Petri dish
Of random madness—
What fails or succeeds,

Bringing extinction
In its wake before
Being extinguished,

Follows no pattern
Divisibly binned
Goodness and badness.

Neurotensin

Tiny peptide, how much
Of which you’re releasing
This moment will decide

Whether your brain encodes
This memory fondly
Or fearfully. The tilt

Is in favor of fear,
Evolutionary
Bias for survival,

But valence assignment
Includes the happier
Recollections as well.

Now they are studying
How this molecular
Switch actually functions,

But what we want to know
Is how the brain can code
Most experience as

Indifference. Moment
To moment, what are you
Emitting to forget?

Thalassa

What does the fist need
To make it happy?
What does the arm want
To stop its crying?

You hear them calling
At night, in your boat,
The agonized parts
Of the body, lost

At sea, in the waves,
Same as you, same as
Your boat, all the boats
Scattered and bobbing,

Full of persons, beasts,
Energy sources,
And disconsolate
Dreams, bits, body parts.

Are they all lifeboats?
When did the ship sink?
What is this? Even
The sea is at sea.