Hares and Bats

At 4am
The moon just up,
The air still warm,

The dark is full
Of lights, the lights
The least of it.

The sense you sense
What can’t be sensed,
That all dark’s waves

Have no real gaps,
Grips you. You’re caught
To move, held fast.

Plans Are Dreams

More poised, more strict with the past—
What links, what hews close to what
Else, what have you got to use?

Dreams go through the past like kids
Go through rooms they’re sure hide toys,
The way rats go through a barn—

They have no goals but to get
More of what they feel they crave
As fast as they can get some—

They’ll rip through what they have
To get at some, gone or done.
A plan is a cat, a thief,

A grown-up on the far side
Of the one-way pane of glass
Who takes notes, who cuts the past.

Still a dream, through, still locked in
With the kids in the wrecked rooms,
All those rats in the dark barns.

The House That Plague Built

And what does this mean for me, you ask,
Or for those I care most for, my kind?
You ask this day to day, hour to hour,

Each bit of news, each change in the air,
From a heat wave to a crash in oil,
From a plague to a gun in your face.

What does this mean for me? Should I do
The thing I’ve dreamed of, the thing I feared,
The thing that I do most of the time?

Did a car just ram you at the light?
Is that a cop, a pink slip, a coup?
Is that a chance to flee? Can you move?

Now what’s that ex of yours gone and done?
Now what are they out of at the store?
What blew up? Which woods burn? Where’s the war?

What does it all mean for me? What’s next?
You scheme, but for the most part you guess.
Each guess is the means to all the rest.

A Mind of Its Own

The mind can’t make the glass work.
If it curves in, all it sees
Is mind and mind and more mind,

Minds to the ends of the world,
Which are just more minds, in mind.
But if the glass tilts out, mind

Goes out of it, none at all,
Just a world of fires and dark,
Of warm sun, wind in the grass,

Rain on the bricks of the house
Built to keep mind dry in rain,
But no sign of mind at home.

What a strange scene. Crane its neck
How it will, mind sees the world
All in mind, no mind in world.

Tang Ping Zi

No such sage, but should be—
The wise one who lies flat
And looks up at the sky,

Or the roof, or the tiles
Pinned with holes to trap sound.
A sage can’t chose the lid,

Just to be sage, if that.
Heat swims laps in the shade.
If you can’t swim, lie flat.