Oak Tea

Some of you won’t have such luck
To grow old, rot, and then die.

Some of you won’t have the grace
To die young in a sad way.

Some of you will rot while young,
Live on frail as a shed leaf,

As a shed leaf that still breathes
Where it lies in the leaf meals

Of the small things that eat leaves,
Lies in leaf bones that don’t breathe,

In leaves that did fall with grace,
Gold or red, or old and brown,

And each spring it’s worth a day
Up high in the scrub oak cliffs

To toe through the flat grey mass
Of damp mats from last fall’s leaves,

To hum with the thought of one
Leaf left in there that still breathes.

Nun of Nu of Nen

The break down of waves as points
Comes from the break down of place—

Space has no place. Stacks of change
Seem far from stacks where they aren’t,

But they’re all piled up in wave
On wave—all at the same times

Are all times of the same place
Which is to say, there’s no place

If you don’t leave out the change
Named time, which makes it seems like

There is no time, or time stays
Out of the way, but the same

Goes the back way—there’s no place,
Just change, if you let time sneak

Back in the frame—the frame breaks.
Spacetime is not one or two,

It’s two if it is one: one
Kind seen two ways, time not space,

And not both well fused, as once
Hoped—flesh as breath, soul as change.