Each Day Gets Right What Can’t Be Got at All

What’s here in the world?
What is there in us?
Read it back to front.
Both ways the lights come
Up; the lights go down.

That’s what can’t be got—
The way the terms hang,
Sun, moon, none or one,
Cows, birds, fields, and stars,
The wind past the cars

That rush down the road,
That way there, then back
Here—all spun on wheels,
And still all one way,
And all gone for good.

The glass is not cracked
Yet, but it’s not cracked,
Just the terms that hold
The shine front to back.
Damp, death, snow, cows, cats,

Or what you like, what
You’ve seen in your life,
Learned from your own life.
Each day gets it right;
All days in all nights.

It Spills Out Things That Spell Out No Things

The light slides down the butte.
The land lifts up to day.
The cows spill out to graze.

The frost glints on grass blades.
The birds sing from brush twigs.
The past is on the way.

Two Sides to None and Each One

A con needs a pro
For it to work out.
So much can go wrong
With half-wit long cons.
Life has to go on,

And some lives, a lot,
Have come up with ways
To boost what they’ve got.
One trick is to split
One’s own life in half,

And one is to split
The whole world in halves.
Apes with words try both.
We split all the time.
Each split holds both sides,

And we split our sides.
One of our best tricks
Is to pick one side,
Think the world of it,
Pack the world in it,

And then split. Catch us,
We’ll ask you to pick
A shell, just a shell,
Two sides to all shells.
One’s none. Can’t you tell?

How to Fail to Tell a Tale

Now, let’s think on those we aren’t,
A task tough for those of us
Who aren’t much like most of us,

Those of us who were ill-formed
In odd shapes that don’t work well,
Who don’t live like most of us,

Who have grown more used to life
On the edge of us, here, but
Side of the road, edge of town,

Side of the cliff, edge of day,
Edge of the crowd, in the shade—
Those of us who don’t think much

Of us as the rest of us.
But let’s try. What are the rest,
The less bent, but just as hurt

Lives like? We sit in the dark,
In the near dark, moon and stars,
Cold by our side of the road

And think on those in the heart
Of it all, in town, big towns,
The few of them rich, most poor,

The souls that know they have souls
And the souls that know they don’t,
The ones with a chance to do

Great things or at least live well,
And the ones worse off than us.
We think, they want their tales told,

Want to read their lives in us,
And they do have tales. We don’t,
Not on the side of the road.

Good for the Cat

Of all the things that can kill you
In this world, you know one of them

Is bound to get the job done, but
Oh how you sweat which one. The news,

The talk of the town, chat at work,
Stats you’ve read, the new plague, new wars,

Old age, the slow loss of your mind,
Your lungs, your skin, your guts, a gun

To the head, your own gun, young punks,
Rough cops, bad falls, just sick to death.

It’s no fun. You get out of bed
And the moon is like snow on snow

On the lawn, and a few stars light
Pins through the moon’s glow, and it’s cold,

And you can breathe damp and taste frost,
And a black cat sprints through the dark.