Now is perpetually new:
My hands in dishwater soap,
Or two hawks locked in mews
In air that inhales, exhales hope —
Nothing is always out of scale,
Nor is every metaphor stale.
There’s no trick to all of this,
No existential treatise.
A moment is a moment’s kiss
We perpetually miss.
The dishes are clean and dried,
No matter how hard we tried
To ignore them in their dirty sink:
Little that we knew we now think.
A man stepped onto a star,
Asked, “Can I have a blink?”
“You’ve had too much to think,”
Said the star, “Go to Mars.”
But the planet, dull and red
Had burnt out, gone to bed.
“All I want is a wink of light,”
Said the man to the sun,
Who replied, “Oh, thou person,
I don’t think you’re very bright.”
[Don’t look to me for a moral —
My insight’s fading, auroral.]
Then we were what we are not,
Our only vestiges of characters
Who long ago ignored the plot.
Within the high branches of factors,
We’ve continued climbing down,
Never touching a limb we've known,
Except what swiped at our backs.
The undone things one never lacks.
Some like to remember, some forget
Intentionally: “Those I never met.”
If and then! We cannot choose which;
If we don’t unblindingly recall,
Then it just becomes a mental itch —
Then after the present’s fall.
Photograph by the author.
Is the fifth dimension speed,
That which clocks human need?
All things move, even at rest,
Which is only quiescent quest.
It is all before, which is all
That’s left. Thinking hits a wall
When it confronts what’s to come,
Unknown numbers, null in sum.
A chimera slips into the room
Then disappears into its womb.
We knew it by its straightened tail,
But never glimpsed its toothless
Maw — nor heard its lonely wail.
Leave before? No, it is ruthless,
Determined to wait — patient
As a tomb — beckoned and ancient.
What is more banal than a star,
More hackneyed than: “they shine afar?”
Each one is just within our sight,
An ageless remnant of delight. . . .
Uh, I meant to say of old light.
The Milky Way is such a bore;
It proves the old saw that more
Is less, babes in a matron’s dress,
Secrets we never fail to guess.
I stare at them under duress.
But when I look into your eyes,
Their light is as new as sunrise.
As if lethal it’s called a “loon fallout”:
The migrating birds wing so high,
Their feathers grow heavy with ice
(Instinct won’t drive them a warmer route)
And they drop, too encumbered to fly.
Their backs are black, dotted like dice.
They aren’t able to walk on the ground.
Red eyes glare, fish-spearing beaks clack.
Their dusk-born two-note wails don’t sound.
If rescued (which they fight), taken back
To water, they’ll drown in a small pond.
They need a quarter mile and beyond,
Wings thrashing, feet running on water,
Or they’ll stall, and all flying will falter.
