What Can It Mean to Dance If We Don’t Mean to Dance?

I’ve never seen small birds look
So much like a cloud of gnats,
Not as light winds live or die.

They zig-zag, a black-speck cloud,
Not quite like a flock should look—
More like a dance. I like them.

They don’t know I’m here. The blue
Egg of a thin-shelled fall sky
Does not know they’re here. Who knows

What might know we’re here, out there?
Do we need to feel we’re watched,
We’re known? Let’s just watch. Let’s go.

What’s Four Words’ Times Four’s Lines?

How you dress words—
Spread their bright wings
And then cut them,
Snipped at the joints—

Pull out the mush,
Which is the best
Part, and freeze it
For a cold night.

What’s left? Small bones,
Light shards that stick
In your thoughts if
You gulped too hard.

How does that work?
You can’t eat words!
No, no. Not words.
The bones eat you.

What’s the Rush?

All was one block.
One gap cored it.
All rushed through that.
New stuff rushed back.

We’re just that rush.
We just see rush.
What comes. What goes.
What won’t come back.

It’s no cracked stack.
Nor is it fixed.
It’s a rush, yes,
And it’s not done,

Yet; it was done,
Made to be all
Rush, but it’s just
In such a rush!

What If the World Woke up and Saw You?

No, that world. Not souls. We

Know how that goes. All those eyes

Trained on one poor life, one day

Or a few, the game, the spite,

The great rush to say cruel things

Or to gush, and then off. Next!

No, I mean the world not us.

Or the world not us, but us,

Which would be the world of words.

Still—rocks, stars, words—things not you,

Not like you, no brain, no heart,

No set span in which to be—

That world. What if one day that

World woke up and looked at you

And you knew. You knew the stars

Peered down at you, knew the rocks

Thought of you, knew this poem, these

Words—we can’t wait to see you.