Arbitrium Peptide Poetics

The sociovirologists
May be convinced they’ve got this sussed,
At least the basics of the dance.

Each peptide is six acids long.
If there’s a lot, the host is full.
Maybe best to lie low awhile.

If there’s not many yet, go nuts.
Get lytic. Blow the host to bits.
It’s a tool for the viruses.

They’re the ones that use it, that cheat
With it, that orchestrate their feasts.
It’s what poetry would be like,

If poetry was only meant
As a service for the people.
There’d be some liars. There’d be cheats.

But on the whole, the messaging
Would always be straightforward, clear—
Here’s what’s happening; now do this.

That human poems can be useless,
Sometimes much to your frustration,
Should tell you we’re in it for us.

After Many Light Years Photons Briefly Dance

Do you learn anything
Useful for life through art
That you or others made?

Probably not. If so,
What you learn, you’ll forget.
Look at those artists’ lives!

What are you learning, then,
About yourself, about
Anything, making things?

How to make more things. How
To make things you like more.
You may learn you can’t save

Yourself through self-knowledge.
You may arrange a truce
With a demanding world.

If a propagating
Electromagnetic
Or gravity wave went

Along, bumping into,
Illuminating, or
Compressing noduled things,

What would be in it for
The photons, for instance?
Here we are on a porch

That isn’t ours, glowing
Along with late summer
Green shadows, a blue roof

Showing across a lawn,
And all our friends are here,
Sound waves rolling on air,

The crows and a chainsaw
Over somewhere, country
Music redigitized

From radio waves blocks
From here, a microwave
Oven beeping again

From an open window,
Everyone arriving
In ripplets on this porch,

This shabby little porch
At the end of nowhere.
Photons get to be here.

How Does Any of It?

Morning throws you
A small belgard
Through the maples.

Here you are, you
Are, lace of light
Outlining leaves.

Complicated
Wreck that you are,
Complicated

Silhouettes still
Reply to you.
How do you do?

We Appreciate How Delicate Your Attention Is

Put your hand on your forehead.
Palm that fragile eggshell’s curve.
If you simply dented it,

Coshed it in a few inches,
Flexed bone abruptly inward,
It wouldn’t be much different,

No more than a box broke down,
A piece of sheet rock dented,
A sand pile some kid kicked in,

But there you’d go, gone with it,
No more prefrontal cortex,
No more reader to read this.

Sure, It Seems Quiet Now

Life goes on since
This universe
Just has to try
Everything once,

Even living.
If there’s any
Way life could be
Other than this,

Any other
Could-be versions,
Then they’re out there.
This universe

Tries everything,
Every version
It can before
Erasing them.

Approximation

Like everything else
In this universe,
Life has so many
Versions of the same,
Nearly the same thing.

Maybe it’s not life
That accomplishes
Such variety—
Variations just
Are that way always.

Your kinship with dogs,
With their quizzical,
Domesticated
Eyes, or your kinship
Even with the crows

Tilting their sleek heads
To get better looks
At you from the trees—
Sometimes you feel it,
All subtle versions

Of each other’s themes,
All radiating,
Not so much outward
As around and round
The varying stars.

An Owl Answers

Well before dawn
In the village
The other day,
An owl, softly

Hooted an hour,
Something hadn’t
Happened before,
Not that you’d heard.

Four hoos, four more.
Soft pause, four more.
Meditative
Almost, talking

To itself, self-
Soothing sounding.
And then, surprise,
A second owl.