Please Don’t Leave Us

Say no poem will leave the world

A better place. What would be

This world as a better place?

Such a vague phrase, isn’t it?

A better place. A better

Place than you found, you lived in,

Had existed any time

Before you? Before we asked

What would be a better place?

People ask poems to stir them,

Comfort them, improve their minds,

See them, show them their own kind.

If you find a poem you like,

A poem that works, delights you,

Makes you feel you’ve made a find,

Say you’re in a better place,

What could we leave in your world

That your world won’t take away?

Beetles and Crabs

There’s no actual emptiness
Between words. White space isn’t
Empty, nor is deep, black space.

Spoken languages, when caught
By audio equipment
Rather than native speakers,

Turn out to be a buzzing rush
Of interconnected waves,
Not small droplets in calm gaps.

The word you want, we offer
From among us, all of us
In this, isn’t emptiness,

It’s thin. Trough might work, also,
But try thin. There are aspects
Of this always stirring world

That are thin, at least thinner
Than most spots, lulls and pauses
In which, it seems, by contrast,

Events are on hiatus,
And the rush slows to near stop.
You are monophyletic,

The last surviving biped
And unique among primates
For bipedal ancestry.

You should know. You’re not alone,
The eight-some billion of you.
You’re not absent in this world.

You shroud the face of the Earth.
You’re nothing like emptiness.
And yet, as a shroud, you’re thin,

And black bones are poking through,
The way words claw through white space.
The Earth loves beetles and crabs,

Inventing them many times,
Thick with many kinds of them,
Only once inventing you.

Crime

We are not and will not be

On the bright side, the right side

Of history. We will freeze

In history’s errant depths,

Among the things that can’t be

Undone (none can) and the ones

That have been misremembered

When not wholly forgotten.

The late Eavan Boland once

Vividly recreated

Scenes from a century gone,

Paper milling at Dundrum,

The hemp and flax, the hard lives

That would never get to spend

The paper money they milled,

Their poisoned, plum brown mill stream,

A crime we cannot admit

And will not atone, the fixed

Paradox of cruelty

And crueler absurdities

That made money, history.

And it’s a beautiful poem

That feels earnest and correct,

Tactile as caustic ashes,

But it cannot be correct.

For all its access to words

That scour imagination,

They’re the reader’s memories

It scours, pulps, and recollects

To mill its imagery,

So readers may think they’ve seen

Something the poet’s shown them,

Darkness in their plum brown streams.

Only You Can Say What This Means

Explanations hang like lace
In the air between talkers
Talking about the same place,

Although you’d never know it.
One refers to a meadow,
Describes it as a haven,

Rampant with bright wildflowers
And surrounded by tall trees,
One refers to the bodies

She imagines buried there
And says could have been murdered.
It’s a strange conversation.

There are wildflowers. There aren’t
Likely any bodies there.
The first talker likes the spot

As a quiet place for lunch,
A stolen hour with a book.
The second camped there one night,

Listening for trucks and bears.
Can day and night mean that much?
Meaning is a behavior.

Poem with the Shades Drawn

Old men, some of their time,
Some before it, mostly
Smokers and meat grillers,

All white, none with money,
None with regular work,
None with live-in partners,

Live alone in small rooms
At the motel, renting
By the month. They don’t fight.

They mostly stand around
In fine weather, smoking
And chatting quietly.

Too hot, rainy, or cold days
You’d have to put an ear
To their doors to hear them,

That is, their TV shows,
Except for two of them
Prone to fits of coughing.

For Rain, for Winter, for God

You pray, but not for yourselves.
Thousands of years, now, you’ve had
The sense you’ve started something

Somehow beyond your control.
Could it just be memory?
Your individual feel

For having pushed or prodded
Something that started falling
Or suddenly rolled away

And out of your reach, too fast
For you to catch or stop it?
Maybe it’s all personal

Helplessness you remember
Here, watching your wildfires race,
Jumping all the lines you’ve cut.

Death Hums Songs by David Byrne, Paraphrasing Lyrics

I know. Sometimes the end feels near.
I know—sometimes I, too, believe.

I know sometimes the end is near.

I’ll be near until you’re gone from me.
I’ll stay here until you’re gone from me.