Even Words Sometimes Long to Let Go of Words

The figure of the bassoon
At the end of that middle,
Largo movement sounds almost

From a later century.
You let it trail in the air.
Sounds like it’s walking through here,

Companion to the brushy,
Feathery voice of the wind.
If only you could only

Converse with the two of them,
Wandering music and wind,
Speaking but not saying things

Carmen Is Thin

How will any one

Person stay ahead

Of the avalanche

Of eight billion

Other persons yoked

By algorithms?

Twenty years ago,

One could find a book

Called Cabinet of

Curiosities,

And that title could

Shimmer, exotic.

Now op-ed writers

And childrens’ stories

Drop Wunderkammer

Casually, as if

The idea itself’s

Become a knick-knack.

All ideas, now, are

Knick-knacks, curios,

Badges to wear, memes.

There are no more words

That stump anyone

With a decent phone.

Better to be plain,

Children—not to get

Bauhaus about it,

But ornate diction’s

More plebeian now

Than it’s ever been.

An Instinct for Comparison

But was it, your life,
Yours, especially
Hard? Not the question,

Really is it, no.
Beavers chew and dam
Anything they can,

Even when hand raised
At wild animal
Rescue shelters. You,

Dear, have to compare
Your life to others,
As relentlessly

As orphaned rodents
Pile toys on bare floors
And gnaw what they can.

But comparison’s
No more that hard floor
Than is dragging toys

To stop up the doors.
The floor’s just a floor.
It never held you

Or your life in mind.
If it comforts you,
Dear, the floor is hard,

And if you’ve had it
Easy in this life,
In comparison

With everyone else,
Your floor is still hard,
Still bare, blank, and hard.

Mother of Systems

Everyone loses, most of the draws,
But sooner or later someone wins.

Everything fails most of the attempts.
Eventually something succeeds,

All the opportunities life needs
Are horribly long-odds lotteries.

Add a little consistent bias,
And natural selection proceeds.

Snags in Language

Mostly talismanic—
Comfort stones, amulets,
Quotations against fear,

Apotropaic and/
Or consolatory,
Defiant rosaries,

Your fingers find the knots
And twitch them restlessly,
Rolling words, poetry.

On the Fault Line Near Translation

His sau is ay als sickker as his seill—

It’s so beautiful in its almostness,

The late-medieval Scots phrasing estranged

Even further by its orthography,

All alliterative and suggestive

Of meanings, to you, that it doesn’t mean.

Sau isn’t saw, and sickker is nothing

To do with succumbing to an illness,

And seill intended neither soul nor sail

Nor self but seal, as on a document—

His say-so is as certain as his seal—

Fine, but then the strangeness evaporates,

Mostly, and you come to poems for strangeness

Like the twist of that small quake this morning.

Debris That Never Coalesced

What is like,

Really? What

Is likeness?

How much same,

How much change

Do you need

To become,

To not be

A likeness?