Green Ash Tree

You’ll know it can think

When you know it lies.

There’s not one thing more

You or us than lies.

Would it not be fine

If the first AI

With its own true mind

Were a yard shade tree?

I think this ash lies.

It fakes wind in leaves

So I’ll leave it be,

Let it think its things.

But I think I know

What it thinks through those

Leaves—I have lost me.

It takes what it needs.

Blooms and Moons

All the names have been changed.
Why? To save no one. Names

Change. All have will and are
Change. It’s true, one or two

Were swapped out whole for new
Ones, but those that marched on,

Great and small, they changed too—
How they meant, how they were

Shaped in the air, how they
Were used, and what you thought

Of them, black or white, liked
Or loathed in them, held them

As names of your pure truths,
Names to be put in stocks

And mocked, names to be spurned
As blooms and moons were burned.

The Tracks or the Switch

You just stand on the tracks
As the train comes at you,
Or you stand at the switch,

Said a proud man who said
He chose the switch, which meant,
I’m not pleased, but I’ll live,

I’ll claim the choice was mine,
And I get to be why
I dodged that long, black train.

It’s not like that. The train
Eels off the tracks and glides
Through the waves of the lake.

Oh, did you say you chose
To stand at the switch, not
On the tracks? Well done, hey?

A Plump Gloom

No doubt the joke gets us,
Sees us out in the rain,

And shrugs. What can you do?
The rage of those who know

They are right or at least
What’s wrong with you will last

Long past you. That’s the joke,
In its own voice, not ours.