A Drift

The thick scent of damp, warm grass
As it dries in the hot sun,

Is like what part of your life?
The lot with the chain-link fence,

Some trash, a bit of dog stink
Mixed in with that rank, sweet grass?

Or the sharp-cut squares of lawns
Green as jade in red-brick walls?

Or the weird patch of failed scruff,
Half-weeds, back of the ranch house?

Or whole fields, just mowed and rolled?
It’s not the same scent, not quite,

But it’s grass, the age of grass,
And you’re still in it, and it

Spreads, will spread as the woods burn,
Will creep through the roads and walls.

Grass drifts. It grows fast. It runs.
It takes hold of ground it gets

And hangs on. The ice will yield.
The fires will pass through and grow

More of it in their wake. Dunes
Of sand and waves of salt seas

Can eat at it, but it eats
Back and at the edge of shores,

Cliffs, wastes, woods, towns. When we fall,
Words and hosts, the hordes of troops

And folks on the run from troops,
The grass will be first to come

And take it all back. The grass,
This warm, green stink in the sun.

Will Is a Word in the World

There’s free will
In the word,
Not your flesh.

Will is free
In the world,
Where will does

As will’s pleased,
As it will.
You poor beast.

Things None and Some

There’s none or there’s some.
But there’s not none, not
At all. None is just
A thought to be known,
A near thing to null.

Or it’s not. The trick
Is to see the chance
Of none, not the fact,
Or the fact as name,
Since none means no fact.

In chance there’s a line,
Sharp as break of day
On a sea in drought—
There’s some chance or none.
Low chance is not none.

One child is a chance.
No child is none. Some
Have lots, but lots cast
All fall some more or
None. No lot means none.

The null is as real
As the thought of it,
As the math of it.
But once the day breaks
Where’s the none in it?

The Truth Is Sly

You are flesh—
We’re your ghosts.
Once you’re gone,

You don’t turn
Us—we don’t
Turn flesh, yet

You’ll be facts—
We’ll be words
Ghosts will haunt.

From Ghosts to Bats

To change, as the Greeks
Built their word now used
For the way life shifts

Sun to bark and leaves,
Meals to flesh and flesh
To meals for more flesh,

Had the parts to throw
And to cross. If life
Throws life through one thing

To the next, then speech
And text bore things past
What they were to what

They weren’t but were like.
Cross the bridge of mind.
Throw clay on the wheel.

Weigh up like and like
With less like, more like,
But leave them be, or

Turn what seemed like one
Thing to make it else.
Like that. Those old Greeks

Liked acts. Life changed bugs
To bats, while words flew
Ghosts that moaned, like bats.