Stick It out in the Kith

Why are you all so damned
Restless? No, we don’t mean
The young. The young should act

Restless. They’ve only got
One youth to position
Themselves, to get lucky,

With luck, get a little
Fun. We mean everyone
Stuck in a rut, craving

Escape, knocking about
In the limited way
Earth’s gravity allows.

Where do you possibly
Think you could be going?
If it’s either you shift

Quick or die, that’s one thing,
But just rolling around
Like stones loose in a boot?

If you get the rare chance
To spend an afternoon
At home alone in sun,

Take it, fool. Life doesn’t
Offer anything much
More rewarding than peace.

Almost Every Tragedy Is Lost

Even the famous catharsis

Is a hapax legomenon

In Aristotle’s Poetics.

Who knows how the goat songs started,

And why uniquely Hellenic?

Sad stories, legends of failure,

Aristocrats and magicians

Destroyed for challenging the gods,

And so forth, are common enough.

Everyone has their horror tales,

Ghost stories, wonder tales, and myths.

Why did the Greeks need tragedies?

Why should you trust Aristotle,

Who never practiced tragedy,

As first and last word on that art?

Because he was at least thorough

And systematic, and a fan,

Unlike Plato, and he’s what’s left.

Middens and fossils, coprolites,

All your memories of the past

From which to reconstruct your lies,

They’re not you’re fault. What can you do?

Vernacularly, tragedy

Means anything unfortunate

Enough to grieve that it happened,

With a sidecar of suggestion

It needn’t have happened at all.

Tragedy’s a real tragedy

On this head, since it’s mostly lost

And needn’t have happened at all.

Scission Season

Cutting-off precedes the fall.
Trees withdraw their chlorophyll.

Lakes so low the dams don’t spill.
Small rains barely slick topsoils.

The soldiers’ swords all rattle.
Cold Mountain feels an old chill.

Republics fold their journals.
Der Erlkönig’s dry leaves swirl

To swarm children loosely held.
What’s not put up quickly spoils.

Four AM Outside the Canyon Gift Shops

After the rain, the river runs louder.
The wind pokes around like a customer.
One cricket’s serenade surrenders

To October. Singing’s almost over.
Back of the mind, Phoebe’s got that funny
Feeling. Mitski’s still dying for the knife.

Someone’s always halting while someone else
Is tuning up; something cresting always
Breaks. Wind clears the canyon’s throat, walks away.

Entrance Beckoning

There is no cause, and if there is,
It reaches back from the future,
And is composed of gravity,

Which is the nature of nothing,
Which is the future, which pulls
All toward it, and the vaunted curve

Of spacetime is backed-up traffic
At the tunnel mouth of isn’t.

All Our Offspring Grow at Night

You don’t need to craft this
Or interpret this or
Read it. This grows itself.

Turn your head and look back.
Aha, now it’s larger.
Linear, segmentary

Like biomolecules,
Like multicellular
Life forms of simpler kinds,

Heaped up like the spun cones
By mole and ant doorways,
It’s not the gorgeous soil,

Not the one boring grain,
Or even all of them.
It’s the whole of the coil.