Summer Tanager

At the tail end
Of the season,
In cottonwoods
By cow pastures,

That washboard trill,
Half like wind chimes,
Half like a stick
Run down fence boards,

Trails from summer
As a bright red
Patch high in green,
Loud, hard to spot,

Which gives you pause
While the black cows
Browse, since you know
It flies off soon.

By Acts You Mean Meanings

The acts of all living things

Are fundamentally one,

Someone claims from time to time.

It’s hard to prove or disprove,

So, so far it hasn’t been.

Gaia or protoplasm,

Fate or universal soul,

Electricity or genes,

Something must connect us all,

Something clouds and rocks don’t get

To share with lives, or maybe

They do. Maybe they’re alive

Some way. The options depend

On who you’re talking to. Why

Not, ask the ontologists,

Bring it all back to being?

Why not endless mirroring

Likenesses? ask humanists.

The universe is tricky

Like that. If you can count one,

You always count two. Past two,

There’s no stopping you. Perhaps

It’s not that the many are

All one, at least connected,

Only that one and many

Are one and the same, like God

And every idea of God.

Every Border Crosses Someone

As humans tend to shy from boundaries
When not in the act of transgressing them,

There’s a tendency to describe oneself
As thrill-seeker or lover of routine,

Rather than on the border in between,
Although it’s on the border in between

Where you will live most of your human years,
Taking fresh risks and then refusing them,

And those who stick to their sofas and shows
May gamble the same numbers every week,

Or keep a private stash of contraband,
Or watch true crime, write true crime, or try some,

While those who hang by fingertips from cliffs
Stick to well-honed routines to manage this.

Hours Invented Minutes Invented Hours

Existential abstractions
Tend to be boring—boredom
Remains a fascinating
Capacity, all the same.

The phenomenal cosmos
Seems to prefer near-sameness,
Only rarely disrupting
Its tedious, constant change—

You’d think its offspring would be
Happiest in the slightest,
Dullest hours of difference,
And yet you’re easily bored.

What an amazing talent
For such a brief existence!
You have it within yourself
To expand your hours all hours,

Until the wisp that you are
Finds itself in the middle
Of plains to the horizon
With nothing but time to go.

Trouble’s in the First Line

No, you don’t really dislike it.
It’s what ordinary people,
Those who say they loathe it, never

Read it, turn around and try to
Compose, whenever some horror
Or extraordinary joy swamps

Their own lives’ oil-slicked little boats.
Prisoners, soldiers in trenches,
Metropolitan citizens

Dazed in some attack’s aftermath,
Neighborhoods still covered in ash,
Will turn their grief to poetry,

Reaching after words that hammer
Anguish through others’ consciousness,
Awls to draw tears and blood. Not prose.

When you were in love, when your veins
Choked with those limerent hormones,
When you couldn’t eat, sleep, or think

For being so carried away,
Suddenly you tried poetry,
And if you burned it later—so?

Everything burns, sooner or slow.
Far from being immortal, poems
Only seem so when they survive

Longer than memory’s mayflies,
Longer than ordinary lives,
Longer than they ought to, than prose.

The Rising Seas of Chorus

I have to say, during this heat wave,

The crickets have been super loud,

He said, neighborly nod of the head.

No disagreement there, which is

Exactly what makes small talk neighborly.

Pick a topic true in all ears and affirm it.

The crickets have been pulsing like strings

In the Devil’s orchestra, like cicadas,

Like building the night depended on them,

Which it does, in a way, in late summer.

But it’s the heat wave, the long, dry days,

Not so much approaching autumn

That consumes them. They pulse more

Or less as the air warms or cools, as

The lizards hide in shade or run in sun.

It’s not that life grows frantic near the end.

It usually slows. Desire rarely lures you.

It heats up and chases you from behind.

Of Course, Not All

What would four or five
Of the oldest tales
From the human world
Tell you about us,

The meanings you use
To concoct your tales,
The ghosts in your plots?
Beauty and the Beast

Or demon lover,
Bear hunt in the sky,
The seven sisters,
Smith and the devil—

Tales like those, so old,
With variants found
In many cultures,
Many traditions,

Though, of course, not all—
What are we doing,
How are we moving
Through them?

For you, they’re gossip,
Training for children,
And entertainments.
For us they’re bridges,

Continents, homelands,
And long voyages.
The deal the smith makes,
The beast of true love,

The sisters’ escape,
The bear in the stars,
What moves through your tales
Is us, but what’s us?

What Makes You Think Future Lives Might Care?

Life has been stashing fossils
In the dirt billions of years,
But until humans no one,
Not one species, took a shine
To digging up those fossils
For any reason, much less
Comparative discussion.

What makes you think when you’re gone,
All gone, any new species
Will take an interest in you
And any of your remains?
Billions of years of fossils
Fascinated their living
Descendants not in the least.

Night Raptor

In the courtyard of the poem
There sits, of course, the poet.
Any poem, any poet.

You may think of the courtyard
As a space with a poet
Present in it. You’re not wrong.

You may consider the poem
As a courtyard you’ve entered,
And now you’re in it. Not wrong.

But haven’t you noticed us,
All the small lizards scuttling
Around you and that poet?

Have you noticed we’re hunting?
We’re your allies. We reduce
Cockroaches and biting flies.

In dark hours, after poets
And readers have left our court,
Who will be ally for us,

To hide us from the hunger
Of that shadow between us
Who are dragons and starred skies?