Do Quarks Not Change?

Some say they don’t.
Some doubt the claim.
Some do; some don’t.
But all use names.

They switch. They turn.
They earn new names.
Ah, but, say some,
Not lost! Not gone!

The whole damned sum
Of its least bits
(And those least bits)
Add up the same,

No loss, no gain.
It’s in our math!
Oh, math? No, math
Won’t change, can’t change.

What Is Not and Could Be

You can’t do what you can’t,
But you could do—but you
Don’t do—what you could. Don’t

Get cute. Think of all those
Things that could be done but
Aren’t or have not been done.

Then think of all those things
You know could have been done
That weren’t for a long time

But now are and have been.
Sit on the floor, a kid
With all your could-be toys

And are toys, and pick out
All the could-not-be toys.
You could say this is joy.

How Not

Anne wrote a poem named, “How to Write.”
The poem said lots of things. Not how.
Don’t ask. You don’t have to. You know.

That was then. New York. Drugs, draft, war.
You might have been a kid. You might
Have been the gleam in no one’s eye.

Now is all just just now, a while back,
Or a long while. Anne’s poem still wears
Its just-now words. Has a long while.

How Way Leads on to Way

If a sage or a point came to a way
In a green wood where the path turned, it would

Not fork. The sage would see there’s just one way.
The point would think of the shade and ghost points

In all the worlds of all the worlds at once,
Act like a wave and turn up as a point

On the far side of the way through the woods.
Had the sage stood in thought, or the point could,

Then, yes, one might have made a choice of way
And lived with the choice, sighed, but not come back.

But a sage is a bead that stays on track,
Back and forth, two ways as one way, that’s that,

And a point’s not a point at all if not
Looked at to take note if it stayed on track.

It’s just the woods that stay that stand in waves,
Then sigh and turn, fall one way, and are black.

Shade Soul

The shade has a soul of its own.
In some tales, the shade is the soul.
In some tales, the shade folds like cloth.

In some tales, the shade has a voice.
In most tales, it does not. The shade
Cut from flesh is a could-not-be,

Not a could-be-but-has-not-been.
This is a myth. The tale that holds
The truth’s a tale that could not be,

Like that fool who sold shade for gold
To a strange Grey Man who sliced shade
To fold up like a cloth, soul’s ghost.

All the ways to say what myth is
Are wrong if they don’t get this: myth
Claims truth’s a tale that could not be.

There’s hard shade where the light’s blocked, not
Gone, just less. Then there’s ghost shade: myth.
Myth is that soul of the shade’s own.

The Grey Man’s Shade

By the road Bierce
Wrote of in three
Frames, one voice each,
A fourth’s not named,

The shade that climbs
The stairs, then leaves
By the back door,
As if fear-struck,

Why the wife shrinks,
Her man runs up
And kills her, why,
In a way, but

No one knows who
Or what. It was
That shade the Grey
Man bought. That one.

You and Your Damned Breath

We dreamed of you.
You breathed. Not dead,
But not a soul
Since you’d lost us.

You were a shape
Curled at a desk.
We were your shade
As you wrote us,

And as you wrote
You lost us, lost
Hope of a place,
Faith that a place

Both soul and shade
Could be, could stay.
And so we left
You with your breath.