Fell Out Hard

The small turn
Of least worth
Wants to leap

From this place
To that one
Where it fits

Too well not
To speak out
Of floored sun

A Stab at a Guess-Worthy God

The future brightness of a comet
Is terribly tricky to predict.
This might become a beam in the night

Or disappear into a faint smear
Detectable only with lenses
Ground well enough to discern

The famously fickle face of God—
Omniscient, omnipotent, but shy
As any of the small creations.

The point is that the comet remains
More or less the same slushed assemblage
Of dirty ice, whether dim or not,

And what can you say there is to learn
About God and constancy from this?

Sketch Well

The thing about Long Day’s Journey

Is that it’s the day that’s long.

There’s no adjective for the night.

You wriggle your rump into place,

Ready with your anticipation

For something nothing for dreading.

There’s still more day, more journeying

Into a night that will only play days

Somewhere where you aren’t there

To notice anything and complain.

For now, you have no shows to watch,

No new books to make you car-sick,

Only a sketchbook and a seven-hour drive

Or more with your crumbling-down father,

Driving long day’s journey into night.

And We'll Love You Until It Turns Out True

You’re drawn to fortune cookies,
Runes, and prognostications,
If they make firm predictions

Impossible to deny.
Why? There’s a courageousness
To blatantly declaring

You know what you don’t and can’t
And aren’t remotely likely
To ever guess correctly.

Tell us we’ll get rich this week,
That the war’s about to end
(Or the world, either one’s fine),

Tell us anything for sure
That no one could know for sure.

World No Thing

Three words wide,
The stream lets
One or two

Thoughts slip through.
There’s no change
That’s so great

The world ends,
Nor so small
No thing ends.

What Way Will All This Go?

How long would you have to live
For the scenery outside
This American motel

Planted in beige rolling fields
And sere ranch lands extracting
Primarily calories

In the form of potatoes
And various kinds of meat
Products packaged for stomachs

Around a hungry planet
Bound like Gulliver, supply-
Chained by you Lilliputians

To become wholly other
Scenery? No young mother
With two children, watching out

While crossing the parking lot.
No bare choreography
Of fossil-fueled vehicles

Elaborating that lot.
No lot not well overgrown
With weeds disguising pavement.

How much time until all this
Would look alien to you
Waking like Rip Van Winkle?

So much longer than you have
If you dream of having time.
But that’s not a dream you need.

This motel, this scenery,
Was unimaginable
At one point. No one had time

To watch time changing in ways
No one could have imagined.
You'll roll back from the window.

The Sifter

Fire, flood, fashion,
Wildlife rescue,
Pictures chosen

To represent
A week by scenes,
A week now boxed,

Another tranche
Of history
Filed in the books.

Somewhere, someone
Grows wearier
Of collecting

What just happened.
Forgetfulness
Exists for this,

To assist. Pics
Still pile in drifts.
Let dreaming sift.