The Physics Daily Circular

After going on about
How strange this universe,
The unlikeliness of it—

Leading to mathy towers
And flying islands of thoughts
Concerning strong anthropic

Principles, multiverses,
And such not—some physicists
Seem to have made a U-turn

To calculate this cosmos
Makes for a highly likely
Kind of cosmos, after all.

The details of the approach
Need imaginary clocks
With real probabilities

In them, but for now let’s say
High entropy macrostates
Result with Wick rotations

And are likelier than not.
We are likelier than not.
We really should have known that.

This world is stuffed to the gills
With highly likely events,
Goddam highly likely world.

Searching Shades for Blazes

The last verse of the first,
You make note to yourself,
Roving through offerings

Roadside in the sunlight,
Looking for something good,
Hoping for and fearing

You’ll find it, the passage
That breaks inside of you,
Like a new opening,

New grove for memory
To return and return
To seeking some solace

For not having found out
The way there on your own.
So far, though, nothing much

This afternoon. You note
The telltale gaps, worthwhile
Lines—that first phrase, that last.

It’s Got to Be Hard to Read in That Light

You and your so many
Dimensions, whoever
You are within your world

That brought you here, that turned
You and your so many
Dimensions on its lathe,

What sides of you will you
Prioritize today?

You’re there, somewhere, breathing,
Body wrapped up in life’s flames.
Maybe you just woke up.

Maybe you just ate. Light
Is coming from somewhere,
Turning you on its lathe.

lluminated Script

If you take all the trouble
Of producing a candle—
The wax and wick, molding it—

Fully functional candle,
Ready to be lit—and then
You light it and watch the flame,

That flame is obviously
A part of the candle made
To produce just such a flame,

Steadily and evenly—
Transformation, light, consumption—
Candle being a candle,

But just as obviously,
The flame is something other,
Absent before and after.

Improvisation

The default mode
Network never
Shuts down enough

When trawling poems
For poetic
Inspiration,

But read some news
Or overhear
Some scrap of talk,

Digest dense prose,
And then something
In the dungeon

Stirs in its chains,
And the whole house
Shudders, then tilts.

Just Night

There’s no right word.
There’s no right place.
There are phrases
That sometimes work

And sometimes turn
Embarrassing
As the language
Users alter.

Purse full of stars,
Not false stars, real,
In which you are
Being carried,

The library
Of dreams so small
You never knew
You dreamed at all.

Only One of a Dozen Seasons

The world turns barren
For a little bit.
It will get richer,
More detailed again.
Will you be with it?

It’s funny poets
In other climates,
Each from the other,
Will bicker about
Which seasons matter—

Winter, fall, summer,
Hurricane, blizzard,
Dry season, monsoon,
Nothing, no seasons
At all, just the moon.

Here, in a northern
Hemisphere’s desert,
The world’s getting bare,
Barer than it’s been,
For a little bit,

Hard frosts and bone clear
Nights when traffic thins
Out under moonlight
And coyotes whine,
Just to be with it.