A Good Soak

You have about an hour
Of direct sun left you.
You park yourself in it,

The way you’d position
Yourself in a shower,
To get the best of it,

Ignoring dinner-time
Hunger and setting down
Screens full of books and news.

The world will carry on
Or maybe it will end.
In the meantime you’ll watch shades

Forecast the Earth’s shadow
And haunt sun-warmed meadow.

Unlike Unnatural Words

Scrutinizing some writing

Someone published in Paris,

Roughly three decades ago,

You realize you are struggling

To analogize language,

To say what language is like.

Why you’re bothering with this,

Who knows? Nothing’s to be solved.

Who cares what language is like?

Three times you’ve started drafting

A poem in response to it.

Three times you’ve spun out in sand.

It’s not there’s nothing to say.

There’s too much depth to soft sand.

Sometimes the means have no end.

Identity Post-Politics

There’s no use in railing

Against identity

As a measure of worth,

Privilege, suffering,

Entitlement, honor—

Even Jesus is just

Part of Identity

Among devout Christians

Preaching through latter days—

My faith in Jesus is,

One missionary tries

Explaining, a huge part

Of my identity.

Identity constructs

Identity these days,

An acknowledgement now

Spanning political

Spectra—identity

Is something that is made,

Not eternally fixed,

Not even for warriors

In the cultural clash

Over who is what sex.

Everyone must define

Whatever position

They mean to champion.

The missionary’s faith

Seems very real, and yet,

It’s also just a piece,

A huge part but a part,

Of an identity

That, like any other,

Is labeled, part by part.