A Few Cattle Driven to High Country in May

Watching over the herds lingers
As part of the mythology
Of the American southwest,

And it’s doubly weird, honestly,
Since hardly anyone’s involved
In ranching as a way of life,

And since it’s fairly recent here—
Humans on horseback driving herds
Were part of the Eurasian steppes

Thousands of years before cowboys
Were filmed as mesa silhouettes.
But that’s just it, isn’t it—film

Allowed a new kind of story,
New storytelling industry
With access to desert landscapes

And pulp fiction ready to hand
Already set in such landscapes,
And it took full advantage of this,

Less mythology than cheat grass.
Now, watching over herds lingers,
Along with all the other ways,

The more significant, complex
Ways of converting resources
Into delivery systems.

Storytelling itself moves on,
Discovering new breeds and strains,
Watching over narrative herds.

The Art of Solo Counterintelligence

You wake up, and you know
This—at least one’s waiting
For you, a little brick

Tied with a green ribbon
Left on the window’s ledge.
You’re getting used to this,

Solid-state packages
Deposited gently
That magically transmit

Through silicon or brick
But can’t be unfolded,
Can’t be entered, no room,

No space, no container.
Hold on to this—ready
Yourself for the moment

When it’s too suspicious,
Surveilling surveillors
Quietly from your room.

At some point, you will need
To fling this straight at them
Or fling it far away.

The Stairway at a Single Bound

Obviate parade—

The transitive verb,

Its oddball object,

Excised article,

The whole phrase hapax

Legomenon jammed

In a concrete scene—

Maple’s loom is red;

Bobolink was there—

Along with human

Social roles assigned

To garden creatures—

Aged Bee addressed

Us, et cetera—

It’s quintessential

Dickinson, so much

So that our delight

In that surprise of

Obviate parade

Lets readers forget

To ask, What parade?

Day

Sand in the veins, sacks of it,
Wet sand, clogging arteries,
Limbs heavy as piled flood walls,

Not completely unpleasant,
But exhaustion’s exhausting,
Some imbalance in the blood,

Maybe, physical enough,
A matter for this body,
But hallucinatory

For insider awareness,
As if the whole contraption
Passing for reality

Fell into contradiction,
Said, This could be anything.

Eyeliner Memorial Days

Here is a year, a pattern, familiar
To the locals who’ve lived here long enough
To link this weather to these holidays.

Everything in the landscape is normal
Or nearly so, but the slippage is close,
Always close. The symmetry is human,

This imposition of more regular
Occurrences than actually occur.
It’s one of the species’ most striking traits—

To delineate, in the performance
Of any distinction, an underscore
So emphatic as to seem eternal—

These rituals, these roles, these alignments.
Even after terrible disruption,
Those who are left of victors and victims

Immediately seize on fresh rhythms,
And before you know it the neighborhood’s
Linked seasons seem sempiternal again.

Field Experiments

They started in a clearing.
They carved a trench together,
And they brought the sacred books

From competing traditions,
And they set them in the trench
With no special privilege

For one over another.
Then, they climbed out of the trench
And took a composed picture.

From the canopy’s height,
They took another picture.
Then from a helicopter,

Then from a passenger jet.
After that, stock photos served
From overhead satellites.

Meanwhile, digging underground,
Deeper pictures, looking up,
Until there was no lower

And no higher to attain,
And any further shifting
Of perspective on the texts

Had to be speculative.
The truth of the universe
Patiently stayed in the trench.

How to Write a Poem Yourself

The kid considered toy blocks
With no sense of their purpose
In prior generations.

Some were identical,
Except for different scuff marks.
The grown-ups at the table

Were discussing other things.
The blocks were good for the kid—
Tactile, requiring input,

Imagination, building
Hand-eye coordination.
At the table, the adults

Discussed the end of the world
With no sense of their purpose.