Small High-Country Dam

The case for forgetting seems to be
That it makes for sharper memory.

There aren’t many actions in this world
That save lives without losing any,

And forgetting isn’t one of them.
Babies prune their neurons. Elders fade.

People lose names in mere middle age.
Do these actions have advantages?

They do, sometimes. They also have costs.
The well-loved villanelle of losing

Bishop wrote not long before she died
Lets the reader hold ambiguous

Whether the art of losing means loss,
Accepting loss, or forgetting loss.

Winds whistle around the reservoir,
Which has lost half its water to drought,

Exposing the spot where someone once
Left a body après suicide.

Still, two kayaks paddle out, a hawk
Glides by, and the lowered shoreline bears

No mark of what happened there. There are
Those who believe water retains strange

Mystic memories impressed in it
Of everything that happened in it,

But the water from that day is gone,
And today’s water’s waves won’t wave long.

Triangulum

Let’s say you live in a neighborhood
Of about twenty-thousand people,
Either in the city, a large suburb,
Or the whole of a smallish town. Big deal.

Now, triangulate for fresh perspective—
That’s about the same number of bodies,
Counting the humans only, as you have
Protein-coding genes locked in each cell.

Rotate your head. Look at the ceiling
Or out the window at whatever sky.
If you were out on a clear, moonless night
In the desert—five to ten thousand stars.

So, think of a spectacular, starry night sky,
Every twinkle a breathing human life—
Less than half of your few protein genes,
A small town, and almost nothing of night.

So Much Humble Stuff Goes By

All day long, the dust
Burns up in the air,
But because it’s day
And sun, and you can’t
See it, you don’t care.

At night, if you’re out
And it’s clear, the dust
Becomes shooting stars,
But it’s the same dust
Burning up up there.

Far

The patience of the solo
Body sitting in the dark,
The discipline of waiting

Without talking to someone,
Without books, entertainments,
Important activities,

Without recorded music,
Without an occupation
Or animal companion,

Only what’s left of the night
For a few hours in the dark,
Inside or, better, outside

When one body can be small
With its own small words and thoughts,
Lets hours blossom huge black flowers.

Incongruity, Pause, Clarity

Be a true poet, tablet on your knee,
Searching for what doesn’t exist, but still
Managing to discover where it lies.

The serious poems, whatever their form
Or effortful ignoring of known forms,
Tend to suggest the architectonics

Of chamber music, with balanced movements
Contrasting emotional registers,
Then earnest, fierce, dark, or soft conclusions.

But life has a Roman sense of humor,
Happy to have the poets play the fools
Subjected to ridicule and pratfalls,

Also violence, enslavement, and rapes.
Posthumous reputations, too, are shaped
Not like string quartets but jokes. Start absurd,

Establish an odd incongruity,
And then wait for clarity to arrive.
Be glad, poet, you can’t come back to life.