A Jar

Is this a grift? That would be
Your first thought. A wide-mouthed jar,
A hole you hold in your hands,

Does not seem like the best gift
In the best of times, and as
A hatch, a port, a way out,

All the worse. But so the man
Tells you—dive right in, you’ll find
You’re in an air new to you.

You stare. It must be a joke,
And then, sure, you don’t know why,
You stick your head in the jar

To see what you can find there.
That was years and years gone now,
Years here. That’s how you got here.

Whose Name We Are Not Told

Is it the sea of words makes you
Sick in your gut, sick to the core,
Or is it all these fish you sense,
All the drowned lives that move in them?

Are words real since they have real things
That hide in the deep shades of them
Or are we real since we are things,
And our eyes flash out of the waves?

And who are our beasts of the depths?
The signs or our hosts made of flesh?
Some nights at the rail, it all glows,
And you’re sure you know what you don’t.

June First

The way of change has two curves,
One churns next and one turns back,

The curve that counts plows and clocks,
The too far-off that gets lost.

There are cults and gods for both.
Most of the farm gods turn back

And loop past on rungs of stars
And crops, all in the same ring

That won’t end (or the world ends),
While the sea cults and death gods

Carve through storms and waves that heave
Up out of tossed heaps, mounts

That burst in flames, hurl stones, ash,
And bolts from the blue, who knows

When or why, but just this once,
And then on to the next rage.

A month, a moon, is the soul
Of that way you can count on

To turn by the whole route back,
But each moon month has a first,

Which means what was to the left
Is null and what the hell comes next.

The Ground Just Moves with Mice

You make up your own

If-then all the time.

The ifs are too hard.

Few folks can deal well

With ifs in their lives.

You play chess with God,

What you might call God,

Who plays Go with you,

Or some joke like that.

The point is it’s hard,

And just when you get

A good plan for one

If-then you thought up,

That if up and flies.

Your trap has no bird.

All you’ve got is trap,

For an if that flew

And won’t come back, then.

What do you do then?

Make up a new if,

Bait your trap with it.

If the right if lands,

You’ll spring it. You’re set.

And if not, what then?

You shrug. If-not-then?