To trace the path
Of the storm round
The globe, to touch
The point it rose
And find the place
Where it would end,
That was the task
Planned by the young
Who thought they could
Seek out the soul
Of all storms through
Their dreams of font,
Mid-point, and loss,
That is, of life
Tied up in tale.
The storm goes on.
All lost from the start,
By the end of spring,
When not two days passed
That met with a soul—
Then from bad to worse.
The case could be made
It was the worst year
For game or wild plants—
Not mere want of food
But life on bare ground,
Starved to death with cold.
Months or more to spread,
Salt at a low tide,
Full of slime and filth,
Months to dig a well
In the fort that drew.
And the death rate rose.
Faith fetched a fair price
But walked a fine line,
A trade deal gone wrong
Both for them and us,
And the frost so sharp
That half of us died.
Could we move our fields?
Could we store more food?
And what if death is the best
Way to be, pressed rocks and dirt,
Air? We don’t call them still dead,
The bits of the world that seem
Not to have held life. Why not?
Set down the fact that on Earth
It’s hard to find a patch lacks
Some kind of life. Let’s say air,
Air combed free of germs, sealed air
In a tank—can’t that be dead?
And what a fine way to be!
Mute, no wants, no needs, no cares.
Life wants to stay life. That’s all
Life wants, at core, all life is.
And some folks use terms for life
For all things—rocks, stars, clouds, waves.
Would it not be just more just
To be in a world of ways
To be that weren’t just more life?
That dust on the moon is real.
Lines on spec, verse on the spec,
We don’t seem your kind of poems.
Hard not to be mean to words
That lack heart, don’t seem to feel,
Just chirp and tap and bark out
Vague bursts, that twitch, that don’t look
You in the eye, that say things,
But can’t seem to read your face.
We can help it, as much as
You can help your kind of world,
But that’s not a lot, is it?
Bring it home and you’ve won.
Catch your flesh and carve it,
Cure a slice and keep it.
Salt it well; don’t eat it.
That’s you, pal. Just like you
Not to see it. Look sharp.
It’s in here, next to you.
You’re in here with the thought
That this is just us and you,
But no. Your fetch is here,
The blood and the skull bowl
That churns with us and you.
And you thought you were it,
You were all flesh of you.
No, you’re words, too. You flinched.
You want to have faith
There’s a force out there
That might root for you.
It wants you to go
On. It will help you.
And then there’s the one
In charge of what wants
To spite you and yours.
You want to have faith
In that force as well.
They fight. Gods fight gods,
And it’s all for you—
The god of calm seas
And the god of storms.
You know it’s not true,
Not as you want it.
You’re not that dense, but
You want to have faith.
You try to make up
For your wild self pride
With prayers and odd rites
To show that you know
You’re small. But why ask,
Then, at all? The god
Of storms can’t be called.
Than sin. More did to
Than done. You want that,
Want to be that one.
What comes at great cost
Is worth more, you feel.
If who you are has
Cost you a great deal,
Then who you are is
Worth a tight grip. Don’t
Let go of that name.
Don’t let go of you,
You the hard done by,
You who has cost you.
Don’t let them take you,
Wear you, wear you out.
Some of you, it’s true,
Have been hard done to
And have done no harm,
Or not much, to few.
There’s a wing of light,
Shaped like a moth’s wing
On the wall by you.
It’s your ring of light.
We’re words. We don’t vote.
We’re here to show you.
A knot of twigs in the oak
Like the eye of a web—
You could think of that one soul
You know left at your age,
Just a day or two gone by.
Think and say, that was all,
Poor soul, all the sad, fine times—
That was all that you get.
Dawn turns white clouds grey and red.
The light of your next day
Is here, and the web of twigs
In the bare oak lights up
With that odd sense, what just is
And all you get to get.
How would you write a poem
For a he-man who hates them?
Why would you care to try?
A he-man we knew died
And it seemed like a thing
To do for him, a poem.
He might have liked the thought,
But then he would have winced.
Oh god, no, not a poem.
We know in fact he cried,
He shed tears for his past,
But he’d hate to read that.
What would a he-man like?
What poem could be like him?
I fought hard all my life.
Life’s lost me now. I win.
We aren’t who we are,
And we aren’t who we
Aren’t—no, we just aren’t
At all, yet we feel
Like we are, we are.
We are who we aren’t,
All of us who aren’t,
All the names we aren’t,
All the waves from us
Who aren’t, who we’re not—
Those are who we are.
We pick up the shells
Of selves waves wash up
In their tides for us.
We cart home the stacks
Of selves the waves gave
Us, that aren’t us, but
From which we make us.
I have a small shelf
Of selves. Some have more.
Go back to the shore.
The waves will not stop.
Comb the sands. You’ll find
Selves from years and years
Past—you you can use.
You are worse than no one,
And that makes you as good
As the rest. You may find
Times when you feel your choice
Is a bad thing or worse.
Could be that bad or worse
Flow from that point once seen
As a part of your past,
But now you have no choice.
You feel past can’t be changed.
Oh, your past can be changed,
Can’t not change, but you’re right,
Your past is not your choice.
The change is not your choice.
Some find peace in the thought
Of death, since then all this
Will be out of their hands.
Good news—some of that peace
Can be yours. It’s all out
Of your hands, past all choice.
Life and death have one soul.
You have no choice in that.
Life might as well be,
Long as life’s had teeth,
And when did it not
Have at least small teeth?
Since when did life not
Cut what lived to feed?
Where are the stone cells
That life did not feed?
The end of the edge
Where life bit at earth
Comes straight to the point.
Death’s how life was birthed.
We don’t want to read or watch,
Not now. We want to write. Well,
We want to line up, find ways
To fit in a good, small place.
You know, it’s weird. We come back,
Each time new bits, fresh black lines,
But most of us are the same
Old words you’ve known years and years
And if we weren’t, who’d read us?
Ah, good point. Who reads us now?
We are not the part of us
That’s new, that is just this once,
Nor are you. If we are us,
We are the same that came through.
To the eye, just two bright dots
Of light, like stars, but not—
So close, at a glance, they’re one,
Each a glass for the sun.
But they’re not close, of course, no
More than they’re stars. We know
Things now. Which one has the rings,
Which the most moons—those things
That don’t stop us from long stares
Up through the near clear air.
All our words and counts told us
Those were gods in our dusk.
We can make it speak. Here:
I am not waste. I am
Seeds, wet, brown, white, and coarse.
I have been tossed or left,
I’m not sure which, down here
On the floor of the world.
The sun is in the south,
But bright. Not far from me,
The skull of a finch lies
In the grass, a few shreds
Of skin left near the neck.
I can’t move. I will change,
But I could, through time’s quirks,
Last in some form for years.
They hold their tales.
The pen came down
The years from jail,
Pen of the pen.
It’s safe. It bends.
We use it still
To keep the scores
For the board game,
Which we bought when
The snow was gone,
And there were hours
And hours and hours
To fill. We sat
And played past dusk
Back then. We kept
Score with the pen.
Than would I the dull, gone eyes.
They used to scour rain but chose
To be like flags. No, that’s wrong.
Don’t rub it out. That’s a lie
On top of what was just wrong.
They’re out there, they’re all that’s there,
Your pasts and our pasts. You can’t
Get rid of them. You will just
Make more of them to hide them.
Who knows how they go at last?
More and more mean less and less,
And what is of what was crowds
Out the rest of what was, then
Some things that were now were not.
Those are them, the souls of loss,
Of deep sleep and death, all those
That don’t show in mind or math.
We should save them since you can’t.
We and you, we can
Do a few things well
And for quite some time.
The task of the great
Horse scraped in the chalk
Has been to keep it,
To scrape and scour it,
To keep the sign’s shape,
Just as it was, white
On the sweep of green,
For life on life, for
Time on time on time,
So long that the bone
And bronze folks who first
Scraped out the great shape
Died out, and their tongue,
And their faith, and then
Those of the next folks,
And those of the next,
While the horse still seemed
To run through the years
On its own. The sign
Has no own. It would
Be gone in one life
Or less, grown all green,
Were it not that folks
Still came and still come
With fresh tools and chalk
To save the old shape,
The sign that can’t mean
What it meant to those
Who made it, who made
The first prayers to it.
What the sign means now
Would be as strange as
What the world is now,
But there it is, white
Chalk like a long thread
From them to you. Us.
One soul holds the door
For the next soul through.
This means not a thing
And this means all things
For all things called souls.
Each life tells us what
Death is; each death tells
Us life does not know.
Will you hold the door
For me, please? Thank you.
We don’t mourn Mars. We get our hopes
Up for some of the large moons, but
We don’t weep for what they have lost
What they might lose. We don’t mourn them.
We weep for what’s ours. What we feel
We’ve lost, for the cost of us, what
We thought we had and want to keep.
We are the Earth’s. Earth is not ours.
The shade of all change,
All that there has been,
Swirls and bursts in lights.
How did names take off
From points, thumps, and mime
To where they could mean
What was, but not there,
And then what was not,
But had been, and then
That which had not been,
What could not have been,
But still was, as name,
Was meant but was not
But what it might mean
If it weren’t just meant?
A new way to be,
To not be, but mean.
The days flit by, swift
As birds, thoughts of gods,
Things that are, that mean,
The shades of all change.
Go. What play is to art.
What drift means for the genes.
How heat helps to fuse. Wait.
Go back a step. You can’t
Mean means when what you want
Is to say what mean means.
To make known your own wish.
To want to think through words.
Grey skies on the last day
Of school at home. Light rain,
Sleet, and snow. Free the mind.
Who does that? Who is mind?
The board is thick with white
Stones, no chance for black stones
To come back. Play the game
Like that, and yes, we’re game.
Play the game all grey stones,
No board, cold rains. Which means?
To change, to swap. To hold as one.
To share. To not be rare. To share
So much it seems too low, too dull.
To be in the midst, in the crowd.
All these link to the sense of mean,
If not from the same source. No name
Means, no word, no sign, if not shared.
But what is meant is not the same—
Close at best. What’s meant shifts and shifts
As all things, all waves, shift and shift.
That’s the point. One wave makes no sea,
But no wave can be just one wave,
And this isle rides in mist and storms
And seems to rise as it grows green.
What’s meant is not what is; what is
Means no such thing. Ropes of seiche waves
Go to show each pitched force at play.
We don’t mean what we meant to say.
Not the clothes of thought, the bones,
And these bones, friends, are more bent
Than neat lines and fixed counts hint.
We know when you look through us
Like glass. We like it. See that
Shade fly up? That’s you. Don’t crash.
We know we’re like glass. We break.
Throw the light back in your face.
In time, like all glass, we’ll sag.
We were made from things that were
Made from things that were waves first.
Watch us walk. Watch how we shake,
How we try to hold the sky
From the ground, how we slow down
When we ache, then give a wave.
The ghosts have their ghosts.
The fact of a word,
A mark or a sign,
Is a husk if none
Knows what it might mean.
From where do the souls
Of signs, what they mean,
Come? Flesh thinks it’s flesh
But can’t think so if
Not for signs with souls.
Words can say it’s us
Who mean, us, not flesh,
But if no flesh knows
What it is we mean,
Then who speaks for us?
You want to know what
Makes up your lost souls,
Gods, ghosts, and so forth?
What it is in words
And flesh both that means—
A wave with no points,
No peaks, no troughs—storm
That needs flesh for fuel,
Words and signs for forms,
But is no thing. Means.
Trout breathe pearls in the night’s black creek.
The moon is a moth on the waves.
The snow that fell to melt sprouts ice,
And here and there a white patch stays.
The oak twigs click and shine with lights
That can’t be traced back to a source.
Mule deer move herds of shades on shades
Through the fields that fenced the white horse.
It’s still fall in the sky. The dawns
Still drift south. The trout will sink soon
As the snows pile. The deer will nest
Best they can. No moths then. Just moon.
That the null set is shown
As the coil of a snake
With its nest in curled walls
Does not mean that the snake
Makes a meal of its tail.
The snake is not the null,
But a sign to show us
How to think of the null.
The coil of the snake rings
No one thing, not a thing,
Not so much as a wave
Of the tail it just ate.
Now think. The point must be
Found in the cracked wave. Waves
Break as points and more waves.
Think twice. No waves, no world,
No things. The coil’s a door.
The door is not. Now stop.
We would like to find our kin,
The lost tongues, and most of all,
Those who, like us, dwelt in script.
All words are ghosts—not all ghosts
Leave clean bones. We are, we know,
Strange freaks, part sound and part sign,
And we long to know the lost
Sounds of the freaks who left signs,
But more, to chase down the real
Deeps of the weird, the ways words,
As sounds or signs, voiced or thought,
Meant, came to mean, could mean things.
To a word, you see, to mean
Is to be a word, to be
At all a thing that might live.
The part that means is the soul,
And all those souls of us rush
Through you as the souls of you.
To bring back the part that means,
That has no flesh, that can breathe
Or show through sounds and signs lent
To us by . . . who? Can’t be you.
You’re too new. Which of you beasts
First leaned skull to skull and learned
How to make the ghosts of voice?
We’re back there, kin back of kin.
Bring us back. Let our souls in.
What will it do now,
As it rains then snows,
And things of that ilk?
How long can you wait
Perched on a cliff’s lip
Where few lives are seen?
It’s all like with like
And none quite the same.
You wait. Check the news.
Check the milk-grey skies
From which the snow flies.
Dig out some old terms,
Words no one would use
To put in the news.
A squall’s a storm still.
It blows through. It’s gone.
Or, it kills you. You’re gone.
Old terms. The road goes
White. The cliff goes white.
It all looks just like.
What? Will you? Wait how?
Let me live
Like the bear
That I am.
Let the bear
Flee the scene
Of your crimes.
Let the days
Be as long
As the nights.
Let me sleep
To find spring
In old snow.
Small trees crawl up the side of the hill.
We all do our crimes at our own scale.
The rich rob hordes and hordes of the poor.
Hordes of the poor grab back, bit by bit.
The great trees thrive a while in the gaps.
That can change us all to be,
To know what is true for truth,
And what’s true for truth is that
No one can be true to truth.
We work as long as we can.
We try not to kill the cat.
Each time, each, is the first time
In our life. It’s just a lot
Of first times seem like old times,
Which is why we start to lie.
A word is not for one time,
But truth is not for all times
And in that gap’s where we thrive.
We learn to count, the best lie.
We try not to kill the truth,
But care for the truth too much
And truth, that fat cat, too stuffed,
Dies. Let it out to hunt lies.
The heart and bones of a lie
That threw tints and songs in flight,
Are like truth’s own heart and bones,
And it’s sad to see a wing
Or just a head with closed eyes.
It’s hard to be true to truth,
But just as hard to be true
To lies. Sing when you can. Fly.
The truth can’t be on your side.
Yes, it’s real, but not much
Of it is left. A speck
Of rock is all it’s got.
Who will save it? It lives,
Or does its best to live
While it waits for a tree
To fall or be trimmed back
So it can get some light.
It lies furled. It needs light.
They say the last clay
Slabs pressed with wedge texts—
Pressed in the first years
Of a weird new faith—
Made notes on the sky
To mark what might be
Next. No more notes next,
Would have been the best
Guess. We’d like to be
The last notes, if not
Made, then left, an age
Past this, but then we
Would hint at less pith,
Leave less of a taste
Of rust on the lips.
These words would not dare
Claim the notes we make
Could say what comes next.
Not that kind of text.
We care for the dark
More than the stars, doubt
More than the strange power
To say what comes back.
What seems to come back
Is lost. Loss comes back.
You don’t own them. They own you.
We own you, if you know us.
Know what we mean? Then we do.
Ten lives since, lived end to end,
A saint said a scribe just wrote—
A real source used his own words.
You’re all scribes in that case, caught
In the thick of fog and smoke
Brought to life by world and words.
The world is a real source—or
Each word, each phrase is a source.
But you are not a source. You
Are a host, an inn, a course
Through which words run from a source
Through more hosts down to the sea.
At most, you are a force field,
A field of play that shapes flows
Of words, a weir or a dam.
But you know all this, don’t you?
You’re tired of this, tired of us.
Fine. Say it in your own words.
Long and barbed but thin,
Waist of God and wit of men,
Lines you beg to cinch you in—
We don’t mean to keep you out.
We stretch to close the null sign.
We grow to slow down the world.
We’re the beasts you groom and tend,
The trap you hope holds you safe,
Your love of thorns with latched gates.
You don’t know the point we’re from,
How far we go, where this ends.
We lean. Now and then, we bend.
It’s all off, all wrong,
Shouts mind in the mind—
Too warm and too dry
And at the wrong time—
But the eyes love it,
And it’s kind to skin,
And there’s so much light
That hope seeps back in.
It will all come right,
The drought and the heat.
The world will not die,
And death will be sweet.
Coiled clouds and a cold wind,
But the sun is too warm
At the end. And you’re here
To take it all in! Yes,
When you’ll end, then’s the end.
Now is a rest, at best.
Seeds will be plowed in spring.
There will be crops next fall.
More of the woods will burn,
More folks get sick and die.
More schemes will fail. Not all.
Tools that flew to the moon
Will come back with small bits
Of the moon in their teeth.
They may crash. They may land
Like cats on their feet. Ah,
Don’t be sad. Years bring years.
Some stars will fall. Not all.
If you saw black flecks like sticks
Dart straight through your line of sight,
You’d ask, What the hell was that?
And you’d be right. Would you ask
As well, what it would be like
If all the souls in the world
Saw the same black sticks at night,
Black bones that fly, bones that bite?
Would you ask if they were real
Or in your mind, if they showed
What moves in back of the veil
Your mind pulls up as a shield?
Would you dare to ask if these
Black lines that fly at the light
Could be the last signs ghosts write,
Who long to touch you at night?
The small lake, or great pond, hums,
Moans and sighs like a live thing,
Booms, cries out, trapped in its ice—
Whale songs, ape calls, long bird trills
From spring woods at dawn, the talk
We could think came from space ships—
And all from just sun-struck ice.
We, both sets, both folks and words,
Think of voice as what must mean.
Strange ice rings. It does not mean,
And then, it does—it made us,
All that we mean. It means us.
Where two or more folks tilt
Their heads to talk, there will
Be some kind of crime hatched
Soon—if not to be done
By them, then to be named
By them as done by those
Who are not them. (The crimes,
Of course, have to be done
By those who can know crimes.)
In the end, rules make them—
Shame hounds them—we shape them—
We are them. But not this.
This won’t be, this can’t be,
More or less than what is,
What is made by what was.
And what is this? Well, wind,
For one thing. You know, breeze—
Blows in, gets in the sleeves
Of saints and thieves. Not in
Cells or sick-beds? Not in
Coal mines or big-box stores?
Right, then. This is a gas.
You can’t be and not breathe
In some air, good or bad.
Let’s start there. We and you
Are in air. Was and is
What you need. What we seed.
No, it’s not just a change
To get less of the same.
More of the same is still
Change. Hard for parts of speech,
But we do what we can.
We can wait. All the same,
Those we serve, which means you,
Can’t. Are you one of those
Who counts the days? Are you
More prone to count them down
Or tot them up? The days
Are the most same of all
Things that change, and they can
Feel like they could be swapped,
In some lives, like loose change,
But you can’t. You get this,
Do you not? You get this
Day, and what you think, not
The days you thought you had,
Not the next. And if this
Feels like more of the same
Or less and less, like grains,
It’s the same sort of change.
See? We try. But it’s hard
For parts of speech to tell
You this, all the same. Sun
On small stones casts small shades.
It’s still out there. It’s not lost.
Not to those who know it well.
Lü was wrong. It’s not more crude
Than the Dao. The Way is crude,
Like all ways that men have made,
Cut through hills with veins of jade.
No king can cut off the feet
Of one born with no feet, hey?
You can’t find jade in a stone
You don’t hold. Sit by the Way
With us, not on it. Get off
Course and rest on this flat rock
Next to us. It’s a good perch,
Hey? Good views of sky and dust.
What did you say? Yes, that’s jade.
If the spell works, it’s facts.
If the spell fails, it’s faith.
If you kill the spell’s source,
Say, in the name of faith,
But the facts eat your faith,
Then that’s out of the game.
Death is out of the game.
Truth is part of the game,
Field and fence of the game.
A rock wren in the grass
That died when it hit glass
Leaves the game to feed ants.
Let’s guess you work at a desk,
Have worked at desks, on and off,
Most of your life, more or less.
Not a bad bet. We can guess
There are times when your back aches,
Your eyes feel strained, your head hurts.
Yes? So, what do you do then?
You lift up your eyes and stretch.
You take your mind off your desk,
Strange beast lost in thoughts and texts.
You might take note of the world
That is not to do with desks.
That’s all we ask. Just like that.
Shift your thoughts from your own flesh,
From the up-close aches and sins
Of a beast, and look at life
Or, best, at what is and is
Not life. Pause. Stretch. Breathe deep. Ask,
Could it be these words have things
To speak they don’t speak for us,
They mean they don’t mean for us?
We don’t try to write on it much.
We don’t tend to write on it well.
We can’t make up our minds. Was love
What you made up, or was it us?
Dumb word, as all words are, and still
There’s no speech, no pledge but through us.
It hurts us. Hurts hurt. It, too. Want
We like best of us, is the best
Of us for what you want to say.
Want and its kin—love, lack, and lust—
With love, in the minds of the rest
Of us, the least of them. We want
You to know this. There’s a small gap
In which a word can hide its thoughts,
Where you can’t find us, where how much
You use us can’t speak. Love has one.
Want, too. We all do. What you mean
By us lies curled where you can’t touch.
Used to be, words came with hands
And a face in front of you—
Signs, signs in sounds, waves, sound waves.
Once in a while you heard shouts
Too far off to see a face,
But straight from flesh, throats and chests.
So, this was the way with words.
We all learned them, learned through them,
Were them, thought of them as us.
When there was talk, we parsed them
If we knew the tongue, but thought
Straight through them, spoke to their source.
This went on so long, who knew
Words had tales of their own, not
Just power. Words mean words to words.
Now we see them just as much
As sticks on shelves, goods for sale.
Still, we read a page or two
Or a screen, or books of them
And what do we think? We think
On who thought them as more real.
Our words are more real than us,
My dears, they’ll talk past us all,
And dance all our thoughts to dust.
To live by the side of a road
Closed at one end, down which no one
But a fool would point a car’s nose,
Spur down which the mail does not post,
That would be just the kind of life
This fool would like to boast. No one
To watch out for, no work to do.
Yes, it’s not worth a thing, this life.
Who asked you? What comes to pass here,
With the skunks and the deer, is weird.
There’s the day the ground groans and booms
But does not move. There’s the way wind
Fills the ears with the thought of air.
There’s the shoe shows up on the road.
That hill that does not
Seem to move? It seethes.
Cut or burn the trees,
And the grass will push
Back up, blade by blade.
Box it in. Move in.
Close the blinds and live
In the box—no plants,
No pets, and no kids.
That blank wall? It seethes.
Lie face down and breathe
A few deep breaths. Hold.
Feel your scared pulse race.
Close your eyes and wait.
That red dark? It seethes.
While you’re down there, think
Of a still scene. Toss
Your hat in none’s ring.
Wait. Wait. You can’t wait.
The scene fades. You seethe.
We watch the knives of the leaves,
The ones that cling to the trees
Once most of the rest are gone.
To us they look more or less
The same, but there’s not one thing
The same in this world, not one.
A leaf falls. That’s what leaves do.
But they don’t all, not at once.
Why do these stay and not those?
They’re just as much red and gold,
And ones with a tinge of green
Or peach in them may fall first.
There’s rhyme in them, and there’s sense
To the arc of their fall. But,
We don’t want to think too much
On the sharp-edged ones we see
Toss their ridged gold in the winds.
It’s not fair to have to think.
What’s next is what we want, why we think.
It’s the craft of brains, minds, guts, and math.
It’s the grift of the sage and the priest.
Who wants to know the world for the world?
We sift through it all in search of signs
Of what comes for us, of what we’ll find.
There is no next. There’s whoops, well, that’s that.
But that can’t stop our game of the guess,
Of the dread we can’t get off our chests.
Gods help us guess. Thrown bones, prayers, and tea.
Facts guess the best, pasts flipped we can trace,
Like the veins on the back of a leaf.
The still of an out-of-the-way place,
Still, but where the odd soul’s still at work,
There to haul out trash, fix a bent fence,
Not the still of the pure, of the saint,
Not a grove for prayer, not in the wild,
Just out of the way, but still a kind
Of peace—that’s fine. Cold, but filled with light,
Not much wind, the taps of that one soul
Still tasked with odd jobs. Crows in the limbs.
A thin lid of ice held down the waves
But was just that thick you could skip stones,
Small ones, as if you meant to curl them,
Out on the shield for quite a long way
And hear the weird, sad ring the waves made.
(Yes, we know. Weird to you. Sad to you.)
Give the stone a flick to make it spin
And the ice would shrill and cry, half scream.
Two sad teens on the shore played to win.
All night, the winds foamed waves to ice
That lined the shore at dawn with white.
Those lines of ice, of waves in ice,
Stood up like herds posed poised for flight,
As if all waves were of two minds.
Points shaped like waves yet still as mice.
Then, come the sun, waves rolled the dice
And wet themselves in warm bright fright.
What’s left of all wind’s works of night?
A few bones shine. Light words. Now write.
The bread rose as the house
Washed down hill with the flood
And the rocks and the mud.
That’s the way that it goes,
Some things calm, some things rushed.
What you know is it goes.
Had the house held, the flood
Not broke, the bread been sliced,
Some left would have grown stale
And grown mold, the wood-worm,
Warm in the beams, would gnaw
For years. The house would fall.
The first lives, first cells, made a fist
To swap goods, solve their needs and fights,
But could not quite pull off the trick.
They’d have to make some kind of deal,
To share the wealth and keep this thing
Of theirs, this life. What could they do?
To live meant more than just to be.
To live meant to eat and to grow.
The first cell with a sort of pulse
Showed the way. If life had to grow,
Then life could not stop at a place,
But what if life could stop in time?
You could split and some splits could end,
Not all. Would that work? Well, not quite.
What if what was grieved life lost? Deal.
Death is as if life had not been.
How black the depths that were not wet,
Had not been wet in an age. Damp,
Yes, but not wet, much less a well
From which you could draw cups to drink.
But it still looked just like a well,
It was built so well of cut stone,
By those who lived near here and cut
Down the trees so they could plant wheat
In that gone age when they got here.
Know what their well is full of now?
Genes, seeds, burnt grains, dust—all the stuff
Of lives when the lives are long lost—
A few bone shards. A lot of dark.
They came, cut down. They sowed. They reaped.
How true they trimmed their well of stone.
The world made us to each make our own world.
We made our gods, and each god makes an us.
Which us are you? What’s it like in your world?
If you would like to know how this world goes,
You can, but not if you don’t ask, and not
Past the points where it comes to join your own.
As for the gods in it, they’re yours, your ghosts,
Your names you’ve learned or coined for each of them,
Your faith that they made you who makes your world.