Lèi Like Class Type Kind

The world tempts you to trust
That what it is and what
You are will work things out,

Since they’ve worked out so far.
You’re more prone to doubt, but
You’re here, aren’t you? You are.

Too bad you learned to count,
To slap the world with names
And ways to group the names.

You’re a class and a type.
You’re a make and a kind.
You squint and draw your lines,

And you see that your class,
Your kind, your type, all those
Like you, all those you like,

Get done in by the world
At some point, if not soon.
Oh, it’s so hard to trust!

A finch, two wrens, a thrush
Sing from the wall. A dove
Calls from the tree of sun.

Sure, you can call it that.
The sun’s in back of it.
Why’d you learn how it’s done?

Score

Bits of dust make streaks of light
That slice the slow wheel of stars
Through a high sky. Moths and bats
Shoot past one car’s cones of light
Down the bare road, and moon shines
On the side of the white cliff.
It’s the dark draws out these lights.

One moon, one car, a few stars,
Two star streaks, three bats, some moths,
One pre-dawn drive up the cliff,
Past inked free-range cows and deer
That lift their ears at the lights—
In a dark world, what’s seen counts,
As if each thing drew a point.

The Charmed Day

You wait for it,
The one that goes
The right way wrong,
The wrong way right—

You know it’s why
You check the news,
Check all your mails—
This could be it.

You do not know
What it could be.
You can’t. It would
Be more than rare,

More than good news—
Would be just once
At the far edge
Of what can be.

Poems Are for You, Not Poems

You care for you,
For all of you.
Yes, all for all—
We show you do.

For what’s not you,
Why should you care?
The fish don’t care.
The trees don’t care.

What is this care
You feel? It’s stuck
In us. We’ve tried
To lay it out.

You like fine days.
You like birds’ songs.
But care you save
For folks like you.

World Shared

On a rock, a bird eyes a man
Who sits on a rock. A long pause.
No one moves. The bird tilts its head.
The man shifts his seat. The bird leaves,

And the man gets it in his head
To think on this a bit. The bird
Must have used its brain in some way
To parse the scene and then fly off.

In the eyes of the bird, the man
Must have been some part of the world
That had to be solved by the bird.
And what was the bird for the man?

He’d fought the urge to talk to it.
He liked that it gave him a look.
His thoughts had been all for his world,
Which was not the world that they shared.

The Swap

Let’s say you each and all changed
Place with some of the dead—not

That you died and they came back
To life, but that you all turned

Up at once in the next world,
While the dead lay, corpse or ash,

Souls or ghosts, down on the floors
Of your homes, grounds of your towns.

Where would you be then? In here,
Dear friends, all in here with us.

You’re here now, in fact. These words,
Names, and terms, all myth and math,

These are the groves that grow out
Of the graves of the dead, these

Take the place of their bones, these
Are their haunts and homes. If you

Find you are in a dense copse
Of old words, know you now take

The place of the dead. Know, too,
They’re now in your place, your bed,

Your flesh, your home, your head. If
Words could talk. . . . If you can talk. . . .