Yet this all feels so familiar.
I have sat here before, on a calm sunny morning,
seeing colors of trees, blue skies,
breathing in fresh air from a partly open window,
knowing that there is disappointment on the way,
on the telephone or in the mail that will arrive in an hour.
I don’t even know what the question was but
the answer will be “no.”
I think I will grow a beard for winter
and become the man I am,
the one who knows many things,
the man who knows that there is
an enormous invisible scale
and it all gets measured
whether we want it or not,
whether we like it or not,
that today, on this spot, it is
measuring clear air and silence,
for now.
Beautiful Like Grant Goodeve
Where do I think I’m going
speeding down this road?
The red light will always stop me,
don’t I know that?
The color of things:
this morning I had my cereal
in a tangerine bowl.
The sound of things:
this morning I heard a
distant boom, a faraway
explosion.
These are things that don’t matter.
But every day, I find again
the good things, the nice things,
the reasons to stay.
Today it is the drone of a
sitar, harmonium; the
smell of cooking garlic;
the taste of fresh mango.
Maybe my life would’ve been
better if I’d grown up to be
beautiful in the 70s, like
Grant Goodeve, Gregory Harrison
or Leigh J. McCloskey.
Possibilities missed by seconds.
Missed paths on the left when
I was looking to the right.
All the men I wasn’t.
All the men I’m still not.
They Spoke At Night
Twin tin cans connected,
string stretched through stardust.
Their signals penetrated
the tide of night, waves of stars.
Their emanations, frequencies mingled with
lapping galaxies and the cool,
rolling breath of darkness
while we slept our innocent sleep,
dreamed of chess squares or dead
relatives come back to say hi,
surrounded by still, empty streets,
DANGER, DETOUR, sawhorses topped
by flashing amber lights.
The radiation of deep space
poured down on us, we stirred,
left to right, found the cool side.
They exchanged, shuttled, built.
We couldn’t comprehend what they said,
we didn’t know any better.
How Sweet The Stars
and at last, looking back at
what once was my home, not just
the structure, but the ground too,
I’m floating, light but heavy,
always two things at once now
when I used to be only one,
twisting, uncoiling, a helix
spinning in a circle, widening,
widening, describing the shape of
everything, and hearing a tone,
a note that is all notes, a chord,
but not music, a sound, the sound
of a circle, the sound of spinning,
a sound that means both
hello and farewell,
while all around me,
collapsing, dissolving in the
centrifuge, the structure and the ground,
expanding the edge between
the shadow and the light until
there is no difference, until it makes
a circle that is part of me, joining,
burning out like something old,
shining like something new,
always two things now,
now three, now four or more,
and now no more numbers,
just peace, just the infinity of
a circle drawing me in, floating
through it all, seeing it all
long enough to think at last,
before they blow away and evaporate,
“How sweet the stars—”
