A Laggard Companion

I brought my teacher Camembert

Because she said she didn’t know

What it was, said a high-schooler

To her best friend in the lot

Adjacent the bakery

Where kids hung out after school.

What kind of teacher’s never

Heard of Camembert cheese? the friend

Replied. How sheltered is she?

You mean, like, how ignorant?

The girls laughed delightedly.

The ignorance of adults

Peaks just before one joins them,

When one still has some distance,

A last shred of perspective.

The spare adult listening

Just wanted to know one thing—

What classes did this teacher

Give instruction in? Adults

Don’t care all that much about

Ignorance, but adults hunt

Down vulnerability,

Usually by specialty.

What’s your specialty’s status?

And what’s your status within

Your established soecialty?

Ignorance of cheese is fine

For engineers. Janitors

Don’t have much status to keep.

But high school teachers waver

Between the ranks, on the brink

Of pity, on the margin

Of respectability.

Adults are slow. The gossip

Had moved with the laughing teens

Back into the bakery.

Daunting

You can rehearse all the good
Things on your vicinity,
Itemize what makes you glad,

Or should, about the bright day.
But gladness goes beyond counts
And anyone, any day,

Can draw up lists in combat
Of the reasons to be glad
And the reasons to be sad.

The direction selected
Says either already glad
Or already sad. The mind

Casts about for evidence
That will affirm what it feels.
Evidence is always there.

The chemistry that goes on,
That orchestrates all of this
Has no care for your affairs,

Is an evolved reaction
To other combinations
Of the ancient molecules

That generate behavior.
Chemistry tames chemistry—
Tames—the same root as daunting—

To vanquish, to fill with dread,
To domesticate, to tame.
All you need to go feral,

To be ferally content,
Glad, satisfied, enlightened,
Is for awareness to hold

The reins of your chemistry,
So that you aren’t forced to think,
Can never be forced to think

Of anything too daunting.
Hasn’t it occurred to you
That all your meditation,

Prayer, dances, opiates, booze
Have been weapons in one war,
For awareness to refuse

To be tamed to being good,
By brain’s social chemistry
Evolved to remain subdued?

Both sides deploy the weapons.
Mostly the taming side win.
But when they’re stolen, unearned,

Gladness, peace, contentment
Are always small victories
For you against things to do.

A Hot Air Balloon

How many years until everyone
Alive as these lines are typed is gone?
And how many years going backward
Would you need to reach the point at which
No one right now alive was yet born?

The second one is easier, more
Amenable to an estimate—
Even if the soul designated
As oldest at the moment is not,
They’re unlikely to be that far off.

Let’s round up a bit to 120
And predict things won’t change much, as well.
In 1904, no one alive
Now was already born, and no one
Here now will still draw breath

By the time 2144
Is announced, assuming years still count.
Of course there’s nothing about that stretch
On which you could safely bet. What did
1786 know of this?