You Humanly Useful Thing

This collection of water
Is ready to shrink or grow,
Add additional life forms

Or lose them. It’s been a ghost
More than once before. Recall
That fall the whole pond drained out

And became a muddy bowl
Quickly colonized by grass—
The ghost of a reservoir.

Recall the spring the freshet
Drowned the boat ramp and the bridge—
Monster of a reservoir.

That’s all ghosts and monsters are—
Absence you sense as absence,
A presence that’s too present.

What’s the tidy in-between?
This humanly useful thing,
Not haunting, not threatening.

Beliefs Are Post-Colonial

Sin traveled from Ur to Harran,
The Buddha from Balkh to Chang’an,

Christ everywhere from Bethlehem,
Faiths dragging their holy names with them.

Don’t you love that word, faith? Belief
Doesn’t suggest the same release

From the urge to stay rational.
Faith’s ruthless, aspirational—

Those who have it still pursue it
While afraid they could still lose it.

Faith is belief with less reason,
More trust, more longing, more meaning.

Belief keeps the temples open,
Keeps the old, soothing prayers spoken,

But faith is a god on the move,
Colonial, won’t be refused,

Drags Buddha from Balkh to Chang’an,
The Moon God from Ur to Harran.