More Light in the Dark Than the Light

Yes, you will lose it. You will

Forget it. You will lose you.

You will go. But the actual

Past, everything’s that’s happened,

Will only grow. The god child

That is this cosmos we know

Keeps scribbling furiously

Over and over the same

Space of paper, whatever

That is—that is, as thick lines

Pile on lines, more lines vanish

But only under others.

Do you have any idea

How much light black holes hold dear?

Advantage Life

Life toils at first opportunity.

Even hay makes hay while the sun shines—

Well, the grass makes grass that you’ll make hay.

After an early November storm,

And the first pair of rigid cold nights,

Everyone’s busy on the mesa.

Nuthatches hammer, chatter, hammer.

Down in the canyons, cattle bellow.

Pickups and cyclists head back up slope.

A mule deer doe leads her latest fawn,

Striding past, clearly all business.

Even the lean, grey lizard warming

Itself on this basalt it matches

So well you think, ashes to ashes,

Is working the sun to advantage.

A Persons

Too bad we found no evidence
Of a clear causal precedence.

Growing plants on her balcony,
She shuts out the cacophony

Of the streets of Cairo, below.
They hang a green curtain, her row

Of various species potted
In cut-in-half plastic bottles.

We understand that she’s many
Persons in one, as is any

Person—not just this gardener
Of swaying calm. She has harder

Selves, sure, then whatever sweetness
Tends her fragile, green forgiveness

For her dusty city, these leaves.
Any evening blooms many Eves.

Random Representation

Here’s a trick you haven’t tried,
Possibly even a cure—
Randomize democracy.

Spin for representatives
By citizenship numbers.
Never mind geography.

You can’t gerrymander fate,
Campaign for a lottery.
Tier those representatives.

Every year, half or a third
Of the lower house comes up.
Every other year the same

For a new middle chamber
For randomly selected
Larger demographic groups,

And every fourth year the same
For an upper chamber drawn
Only from lower chambers,

To give some stability,
Longer institutional
Memory. Make the service

Remunerative for reps
As pro athlete salaries
But onerous as juries.

Then hold votes when terms are done,
But like customer ratings—
Higher scores, bigger payouts.

Make those really worth something,
Motivate those reps to seek
Love from their constituents

Rather than from their donors.
There you go—political
Poetry, as it all is.

A Verse Averse to Verse

Stop. Cut it out. No more
Addled doggerel dank.
If you can’t say something

Profound, at least pretend
Your speech is plain, language
Meaningful, poetry

Something to do with truth
Or images or pain,
Actual memories

Of actual people
Determined to tell us
In no uncertain terms

What it means to be them.
Get back here. Stop prattling,
You tuneless wind-up toy.

The Tide That Only Rises

Your world will change around you
More than you’ll move through your world.
The most exotic travel,

The most diverse locations
Are those pasts surrounding you,
Grown each decade in each place.

You say you’ve traveled the world?
Seen the landscapes, the people,
The great cities, the ruins?

You know they’re all different
Now from when you visited—
Oh, similar, some of them,

Maybe mostly—but new pasts
Creep up around your shoulders,
Soon to close over your head.

Such People in It

Eight billion, with one or two
Hundredish thousand leaving
Or being born, per diem,

Every rotation you live
The entire composition
Shifting by a city’s worth,

Right now, hundreds of thousands,
Millions of different lives
Than just a few days ago,

A rounding error no one
Can exactly keep track of,
Like those cells you shed in bed

Sleeping, dreaming of being
A universe to yourself.