Song Body Farm

Dolly Parton, Junior Kimbrough,
And Maurice Ravel took their turns
In one rotation for a spell.

Mother Goose’s fairy garden
Done got old but found a new home
In the sun. And then they were one,

As in, all sunk in the same skull,
Seasoning and altering them
With all its other musical

Names, tales, and recorded voices,
Compacting like stream sediments
Unlikely to last as sandstone,

More likely all lost with the skull,
The forms as that skull compressed them.
What a strange acceleration

Of the decay of the wide world
Was the decay in the living
Brain, from fresh experiences

To heaped detritus, to fossils,
To stone, all in one lifetime’s days,
Gone while the tunes beyond still played.

Thus and Such

You happen to turn your head
Slightly toward a near wall,
And your brain lights up with it,

The thisness and just-suchness
Of banal paint and plaster—
Not only the small details,

A few incidental bumps,
But the sheer presence of it,
Material in itself

Standing mutely, no other
Than matter-of-fact matter
With no expiration date,

Other than minimal change,
Until it gets torn down or
Until it disintegrates.

Here is all this stuff of wall,
Just being the thus-and-such
Of some bland interior

In some ticky-tack housing,
Monumentally present
As any part of the world.

Extract Supplied by a Sub-Subdivision

You hobble out in the cold
Moonlight just to look at it,
And for a moment, leaning

On your sticks, with your head back
In ordinary moonlight,
You’re overwhelmed by detail—

The squares of sidewalk concrete,
The cars in the parking lot,
Wind moving a few dead leaves,

Washed out stars, a passing jet—
And the thought runs through your thoughts,
Well, this is it, this is life,

The body sunk in itself,
The sharp smell of the night’s frost,
All the things just being things

In all the small ways at once.
But that thought’s chased by the next—
No, it isn’t, not for you.

For you, life is whatever
Other people are up to,
And however you fit in

Or don’t, are cared for or not,
Handle your business or don’t,
Are seen as worthy or not,

More sinned against or sinning.
Someone invented cement
Others used for this sidewalk,

And it took thousands, millions
Of human interactions
To arrive at those parked cars

And to lift that blinking jet.
You’re in a constructed world.
But then that thought, too, trails off.

The previous thought slips back
As you inhale dead leaf smells
With that thin, sharp tang of frost.

De pictura

There is the pavement,
A little like hide
In afternoon sun,
Low afternoon sun.

And there, beyond it,
Is gravel and mud,
Which could be God’s voice
Explaining the world,

If anyone could
Think of God as world,
And not some person
Booming person things,

Just gravel and mud,
Repetitive but
Every bit distinct,
The voice of the world,
And beyond it grass,

Golden in the sun,
Early winter straw
Snow could bury soon,
And beyond that, scrub,

Such silvery brush
And spindly saplings,
And beyond that, dark
Juniper-piñon,

Not even a jay
Perched on top of one,
Just the trees, quiet
Without any wind,

Which could also be
The voice of the world,
Silent when its waves
Spread out nearly flat.

Never mind the voice.
Another person
Trope. One juniper
Looms. That’s perspective.