At the foot
of a oak spar,
moss balls cover
the knees
of its exposed roots.

We don’t see this
in the city, often —
the soil won’t permit this,
not after years
of chemical insult from

household dumping
and heavy metal saturation.
Thin patches, perhaps,
but never these testicular
mounds, hairy with tan spore heads.

How is it possible
that with all these sheer stones
and surfaces, there’s no
graffiti at all?  That no one’s
tagged any of it as turf?

It’s not as if that urge to mark
doesn’t exist here:  even now
boys from a club from a local prep school
are cabled up and trust-falling
down the cliff,

carefully supervised
by their adviser, helmeted
and booted, voice and youth
roaring out of them as they
conquer their environment.

But it is still quiet here
in spite of them, quiet
in precisely the way
the city never is:
every sign or sound of us

sucked into a greater stillness
that will forget us as soon as we have gone back
to our poisons and our tribal wars.
The woods understand what can be possessed
and what cannot.

I stand at the edge.
I look straight out at the tops of trees
that have grown this tall from far below.
It is nothing to them if I fall or remain.
If I leap my blood will wash away

into the clean and potent soil
to nourish the balls of moss,
the upright oaks, the silence,
while the rocks will remain unchanged.
If I turn and walk away, it will be all the same.

In the left hand drawer
of the old desk, 
a huddled pack
of long-missing
stars.

In a box
at the back of the drawer,
a mussel shell clattering.

Inside the shell, a book.

In the book, lightning.

The book’s
pages have fused.
The lightning
has burned the box.
The shell is cracked, fragile
but sound.  The stars
cluster and shudder.

I don’t question
the homing instinct
of such things,
why they’ve found my drawer
to be such a hospitable place
to survive. 

This book
may explain it.

I’ll carefully work its pages apart
to see what can be read of its tales of exile
and closely watched wars, its stories
of unspoken vows, and the reason
the stars fled here.

It is a translation
from smoke, fracture, and fire.

This is just the work
the desk was made for.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations

When you hear
a disembodied voice say
“yes,” it is best not to ask
who is speaking,

especially if you are in bed
after midnight and
the fatigue of your own questioning
is what sent you to bed;

if you awaken to
that “yes”
try to stay awake and think over
all the questions you were asking
earlier. 

Try to decide
where that affirmative belongs
before beginning to question
the source of the affirmation;

if you choose well,
you’ll know at once what to call
the Voice.

If you choose poorly
it will hardly matter
what you call it
as you curse it,
slander it, revile it;

you’ll never listen to it again
nor will you call to it
on those exhausted nights
full of inquiry,

so you will have no need
of its name.

Statistics have shown that the more brass you eat
the smaller the chance
that you will give birth to a moon

If you relegate the wildflowers to the backyard
you will be ten times more likely
to be cruel to family ghosts

If you seek meaning in dust
you will dust
incessantly

The more often you indulge
in wet thoughts at lonely midnight
the less often you’ll sing of conveyor belts

More people have a chance
of dying at the hands of a priest
than will love the pop music of twenty years in the future

Flake gold sprinkled on the cereal bowl
has been shown to enrich the soil
from which grows the tree of all triviality

and the leaves of that tree
stick to the skin and block daylight
seven out of ten times

Statistics have shown statistics
can serve as a gloomy blanket
on a perfectly shiny beach

In any set of numbers
there’s a fifty percent chance of finding juice
for the quenching of embers

A greater part of the darkness left behind
will be overweight children’s tears
pure as the moan of charmed snakes

The numbers want to strangle
the scent of lovemakers as clean
as new mown grass

When no one chooses to count
the mysteries separately
they are as ordinary as air

Statistics have shown
statistics
turn death black when applied too thickly

Ninety percent of all humans alive now
would rather be counted as one of the ripples
than be a Stone

that once launched
slices into water
that cannot be divided

and vanishes
to rest in the lake
with the others that have piled up

in infinite piles
Memories of singularity
and monuments to the rejection

of the laws of chance

The lie
emptied itself
with a hiss.
It lay between you
as snaky and harmless
as a shed skin,
though it reminded you both
of poison
hiding somewhere nearby.
Neither of you
wanted to speak of it
but that papery husk
was so obvious
it drew your eyes
away from each other
into corners
and under the bed.
You each spoke
a while longer, hoping
no sting would surprise you,
no venom would rise
into your lungs and surge
forth at the other,
and while you managed
to get through the fear
and move on
you knew you’d be listening
and watching for it
for long bitter days and weeks
to come.

He opens the scissors
and begins to cut

the details which matter to him
(the origin of the journey,
the car, the mirror loose
on the driver’s door)

from those he has no need for
(the way the air felt like fur
when she held her hand
out the window as they drove,
her need to stop and pee
every fifty miles or so)

then stitches the parts
into a cloak, a story
fitted to what he believes
and to hell with what really
took place (long periods
of absolutely nothing, no talk,
mutual simmering)

since now that he’s done
her perspective is just scraps
on the floor of the motel room

where
he ended up alone
with no one to tell him
that the cloak looks unfinished
and doesn’t fit all that well.