An oarfish came
to the surface to die,
rising into daylight,
a nightmare-seed
twenty-three feet long.

It entered the shallows near where
a man was painting
an eye of Horus on each side
of the bow of his leaking boat,
hoping to keep it just a while longer,
perhaps one more trip,
perhaps with luck and one more season…

He looked down and saw the oarfish —
frilled, silvery,
slow going, taking forever to pass —

and thought of luck and fate.
He looked into the new flat eyes
of his old livelihood, considered
how long he’d been here, how long
he had worked, how long he’d
fished without ever seeing anything
like the oarfish in a net or on a line,

and bent his head.  Lord, he thought,
I am so tired, and my boat is so old;
there is so much left to learn, to see;
so little time to learn it in, but
learn it I must, learn it
I shall.

What the oarfish
thought of all this
is unknown for
by the eye of Horus,
by the eye of Ra,

there’s no telling
that tale of a life
spent in darkness
and ending in light
that would not have
too much of us in it
and not enough
of what the gods intended

when a poor man
was moved to change his own life
by watching
something he thought was fantastic 
die.

Hurricane plodding on slowly,
snarling threats all the way
as stunned clouds open a lead
on it, race on ahead of it;

Tornado, that rabid dog
of a blowdown, breaking up
with sane weather
to fly along and bite all;

the weather gods
are not always
the gentlest of creatures
and they have ruled

longer than we have been 
challenging them
and longer than we have even
been ourselves.

I place my faith in them 
and them alone
for my understanding of
where we are going.

When the bell rings
at close of day, none of them will go home. 

When the next morning bell 
rings, they’ll still be sitting there.

You don’t assign homework to the dead.
You don’t expect them to answer questions today

you posed the night before.
Every moment for the dead is the only moment 

and it’s a myth that they are eager
to talk to us anyway.

All you can really do is lecture them
as they sit, dulled

and neither willing nor unwilling
to hear you. No one has a clue

about what it takes to graduate.
Not the teachers, not the administration,

certainly not the dead themselves,
and they couldn’t care less.

If they were to move on it would amuse
and astonish them at least as much as it would us.

So: why take such a job?  Why teach 
at a school for the dead?  Because

though it’s a remote chance, a miracle 
might happen — but mostly because the dead

can’t die before your eyes from gunshots
or abuse or disease. Because the worst

that can happen there
is nothing at all.

It is unimportant
that I am ripped within
by doubt.  All are.

It is unimportant
that these hands are not
what I once imagined.
That thought
is the same among us all.

It is unimportant that
I can see so many 
already farther along
than I am. They have
the same view as I, see
others even farther ahead.

What is important:
the music being made.
That there is music being made
at all.  That there are musicians
is unimportant except as music
comes from them as from one body —

one must hear all
to hear all of it
or else spend time
wasting away
for want of connection
to the Great Road
As Walked By All.

That I think this, and
that I think this is true,
are unimportant.

Shush, ego;
ego, shush;
listen, ego;
listen, be still.

A pink mist puffs out
from the splash
of a bullet into 
the corporal’s gut;

a mutt tugs on 
a naked, swollen leg lying
on the shoulder
of the ragged, blasted
road, and 

all I seem
to be able
to think about is 
what it’s going to be like
to go home.

As for the way
the corporal fell, the way
the dog squealed and ran
when we spanked him with
a thrown rock —

I suspect I won’t recall those 
until I am home.

Then,
I suspect, 
they will be the only things
I can think of.