Clashes Weave All Contracts

What makes someone confront
Someone they consider
Some species of sinner?

If you have ever been
The stranger accosted
By another stranger

Whose mock politeness turns
Increasingly bitter,
You’ve had cause to wonder.

The accuser most often
Is older, and the tone
Is edgy, querulous,

More or less bullying.
The sin may be minor,
In fact, usually is,

And either local or
More or less personal
To that one enforcer—

The way a car is parked,
The way voice takes up space,
The way someone is dressed.

Everyone gets annoyed
And feels irritated
By others’ minor sins,

But what sends some people
Straight to accusation,
What reckless disregard

For their own safety, for
Someone else’s headspace,
For nuances of sin?

Whatever’s going on,
It leaves behind a fine
Thread in the tapestry

That connects the social
Contract to the bombers
Threatening overhead.

Junk

Authenticity can never inhere
In curators of authenticity.
It’s not entirely clear why this should be—

The curators of authenticity
Obviously care about it deeply.
Maybe that’s the signal of its absence,

And curators of authenticity
Are like devotees of enlightenment
Or the gothic writers of ghost stories,

Obsessed with a perspective they don’t have.
In any event, if you see someone
Cooing over an authentic something,

Think of the lives lived in plastic and trash
Authentically fond of what they’ve got stashed.

Cloud Colored

You’d have to be a ghost,
Wouldn’t you? Nobody

Alive has skin color
Like the color of clouds,

Those glowing white light heaps,
Those feathery grey-blues,

Heavy, mineral greys,
And night greys with lightning.

Someone should keep an eye
On you, except you move

Like clouds do, a presence
Over here shows up there,

Not even the same shape,
Hard to say the same you.

Do you have a message,
Or would it just be best

To try to ignore you?
Why won’t you try a sign?

Oh, now you’re snow again.
And now you’re nearly blue.

No One Open

In the hospital

(Why is it always

The hospital, when

There are so many?

Prison is never

The prison, never

Even a prison,

Just prison, as in

They’d been in prison)

Not so long ago,

You’d had a window,

A tall rectangle,

Narrow, in the wall

Just behind your head,

So you had to crane

Uncomfortably

To glimpse sky through it,

Some of the city.

No one can help you

Alone in the woods

Where you’re surrounded

By pines on all sides

And insects buzz you,

Since there are no walls,

No window at all.

Little Idyll

When you escape
For a few hours,
Even a few,
You want to say

Your life’s more real
In this rare place.
Here’s where you write
And take pictures.

Now why would you
Misrepresent
Your time like that?
This solitude

In the forest
Of butterflies—
This isn’t you.
You? Who needs you?

Fishnicker

The clacking of a grasshopper,
That sudden insect castanet,
Rose and went silent by the stream.

No one around. At the entrance
To the campgrounds, well down below,
A sign warned against fishnicking,

That is, claiming a picnic site
With no intention to picnic,
Only to wander off and fish.

No fishnickers on higher ground,
No picnic sites, either, just fish,
Two trout basking in the shadows,

Sharks of insects in a thin stream.
Gnats kept dipping at the surface,
And one trout surged up for a snack.

How’s that for a fishnicker, then?
A grasshopper clacked again. No
Trout likely to picnic on them.