Sacred Avenues to Conflict Resolution

What does your rival hold dear?
What does your counterpart honor?
Find a way to honor that, too.

It’s not practical concessions
Alone produce diplomacy.
They may even be insulting.

Remember this little secret—
Groups don’t differ much when it comes
To holding some story sacred,

Only in the particulars.
You can’t be one of them. You can’t
Not be one of you. But they’ll have

Some cherished sense of what’s holy,
What’s good, what’s honor, what’s duty,
And it won’t be yours and it won’t

Be unlike yours. Show their sacred
Some respect, and you’ll have a chance
To alleviate some horror.

Hospital Zillow

One thing about fantasizing
The ideal place for you to live
Is that it presumes you’ll live there,

Meaning the fantasy crumbles,
If you don’t have much living left.
What’s six months sick in a mansion?

Deep in the Shade, Gone in Light

You as you will leave nothing.
You will end but you won’t leave.
Ends are only plowed back in.

The blue sky’s a confusion
Caused by too much nearby light.
Day moons show it’s always night.

But face it, there’s a difference
When you face the scorching sun.
There’s very little distance.

Spirit Wanders Off

To daydream on the difference
Between what’s from inside the head
And what comes from outside the head

That once inside the head becomes
Enmeshed with what’s already there,
Your best guess at reality.

But no punitive bureaucrat
Created the difference here
Between these constrained conditions

And the loftier perceptions
Arising. This kind of daydream
Is a quarrel. Bodily aches

Constrain the conditions, punish
Thoughts that try to settle on calm,
Want to find something beautiful

In the huge bats hunting soft moths
By the desert’s distant sky lights
To the strummed applause of crickets.

Parallel Parking

Such an elegant skill,
Rarely needed, rarely
Mastered, often taught.

Your child practices
With old traffic cones
On an empty road,

In bison country,
High in a meadow,
The last place parking

Will ever be scarce.
When she nails it once,
Smoothly between cones,

Not over the edge,
Not stuck in between,
You both celebrate

And call it a day
And she gets to roll
Down the empty road,

Like she’s a driver,
A real driver, and
She owns the pavement.

A Poem Is an Act of Hospitality

The edge of the cliff blocks the sun.
Family news, local news, world news.
What’s more important to a poem?

Ask yourself as you consider
Your choice of a theme for tonight.
You wander into the garden

Of wild weeds and evening flowers.
You could report what you’re seeing,
Or react to what you’re reading,

Or just express your frustration
That the world news is violent
And sad and seems to make no sense.

You can own up to what you did.
You can fix a meal. Pet the cat.
The cliff rises against the sun.

Why Self-Defense Is Dangerous

If you’re armed, if you know
You’re armed, then you’re more

Likely to think others
Have armed themselves as well.

Crutch could be a rifle,
Binoculars pistol,

Any solid object,
Dark in the hand, a gun.

Mistakes happen this way,
Even minus bias

About who is holding
The shadowy object.

Nonetheless, if you’re armed
It makes you feel safer.