It’s Done, It’s Not a Threat

Sometimes, if you don’t
Know what’s happened yet,
But you know the odds,

You’ll rethink backwards
Or simply forget
That it has happened,

Whatever it was,
As if you can bet,
Still, on the outcome

Or still affect it
By what you’ll do yet,
Although even gods

Can’t reset the past
By taking back threats.

Moon Over the Valley of Aijalon

You can’t keep living without
Racking up days. If you’re here,
However barely you’re here,

Earth’s taken another turn,
And there’s a dim part of you
That would be willing to age

If the spin would only stop.
It makes no sense to want this,
To crumble in a still world,

But you’re crumbling anyway,
And if the planet held still
Maybe you could savor it.

The essence of miracle
Is to change one fact alone.

Toolish

The earliest generations with fire
Could not have predicted the earliest
Farmers supplanting their offspring’s offspring.

What incredible power, to control fire!
All other creatures fled in front of it.
The fiercest predators would flinch from it.

The earliest farmers with rich harvests
Could not have predicted the earliest
Chariots overrunning descendants,

The mines and trade routes for copper and tin,
And so on and so on. Control improved.
Prediction improved prediction as tool.

What incredible power, to predict well!
It would be, if you didn’t burn yourselves.

The Messenger

There’s a namazu-e print

Entitled Absent-Minded.

An old man dreams by a stone

While the earthquake catfish god

Hovers like a whiskered cloud

Of darkness and burning homes

Directly over his head,

His contented, dozing head,

His long-white-bearded, drowsing,

Inattentive head, maybe

Dreaming that catfish. The quake

Seems to mean nothing to him,

Although the wall-eyed catfish

God is on fire and smiling.

And Now Look Where We Are

Long ago, there were engines
That could talk like animals
And dwell at altars, like ghosts.

They were magic listeners
Who heard whatever was said
And remembered every word.

Anyone could consult them
And learn all sorts of strange things,
But you never could be sure

What might tumble from their throats,
And how were you to check them,
Who remembered everything?

People became less trusting
And left the engines rusting.

The Tombs Did Not Produce the Gifts

It takes other words / to say

The words they mean, concluded,

Once, Stephen Dunn. That’s a fun

Koan to hang from. You say

Some words, but they’re not the words

You mean. You say other words

To say the words you mean, but

Now what are they? The other

Words that say the words you mean,

Were they actually the words

You mean, or words you needed

To then say the words you mean?

Meaning isn’t in the words,

But you can bring them meaning.

Breathing Just Beneath the Surface

That you dream, that you have to dream,
That the brain has to conduct these
Tournaments of dishevelment,
To be able to continue
With living as if in plain day,

That other animals also
Seem to need for their brains to dream,
That you can study them, twitching
And whimpering, at least when not
Locked up in dreaming of your own,

That you can’t clearly demonstrate
What the dreaming does for dreamers
Who experience and forget,
Who experience and forget,
Suggests you’re not quite awake yet.