The Last Task

It’s never content,
Never a substance
And yet it’s always

Coordination.
Give yourself a task
To finish this day,

Done before sunset.
Notice, as shadows
Grow longer out there,

How tempted you are
To think of your task
In terms of volume

Of remaining time.
The sun is setting.
The stars are waiting.

Time is running out.
But it’s not—never
Was any amount.

More events add on
To the long accounts
Of what has happened.

No, you need to link
Daylight to the task
You meant to combine,

To synch up—you need
To coordinate.
You tell yourself this

As you watch the light
And start to notice
That you’re arguing

The point with no one
Substantial, while sun
Has pulled back the drapes

To open the night,
And in these stanzas,
Each part of your life,

You’ve never quite asked
The main thing—just clean
Forgotten the task.

How Could You Have Lost Her

As soon as you pointed out to her
That she really was a character
Generated moments earlier

On the loom of your interior
As you fell into a dream, she laughed,
A blurry-edged but grown-up figure,

Confident, even superior
In her attitude, folding her arms
Cheerfully before her conjurer,

As if to dare you to dismiss her,
Which you did, unintentionally,
By waking startled. Now you miss her.

Creative Change Is Ruinous

As is all change, but creation
Is change on fire, is Shiva
At escape velocity

Achieving the hurdler’s stride,
Is the counterpoint to time,
The arch straddling entropy,

The rocket-engine racer
Over the Bonnevile salt flats,
The robot spacecraft slingshot

By the gravity it fights
To fling itself fully out
Of the solar neighborhood.

To reach through to creation
Requires bursting barriers,
The sudden release that roars

You are actually making
Something new of nothing much.
It’s what you’ve made you’ve ruined.