Trying to understand how things happen.
Silence is the whiteboard upon which
the teacher writes with a small
stick of light. The words glow blue-black
up there before us all. Each minute of class
contains a lifespan. All minutes
are lifespans, in fact. Do you know
how many lives end as quickly
as they begin, how we thankfully
are never fully aware of it
but can sense, somehow, at times,
the sputtering back and forth
of ghost beings who were never here
long enough to register as such?
Human and inhuman alike, they mattered 
as much in their impermanence as we do
in the only slightly longer time we are held here.
The teacher writes on the whiteboard with light
drawn from the flickering in the room.

Trying to understand how anything happens
in such poor light. How in all this cycling
there is no moment where everything is alive enough
to have full agency, and no moment 
where everything is dead enough to have full peace.
The teacher writes in silence. Feel, it is written.
To understand how everything happens, you must
feel the static from all these comings and goings.
The stones themselves flicker under your feet.
Can you now feel them? Nothing and everything
happening at once, lives and deaths, existence 
a flame first here, then there. Consciousness
humming a steady note with a name
we keep meaning to look up to see
if one truly exists for this. The teacher
writes in what we once called silence
with a small intense light on the whiteboard, 
dismisses us without turning around, keeps writing
as we go out single file from the room. 

A gardener lies on his back in the late fall stubble
in his suburban garden.
He looks up and begs God for healing.

His hair’s dirt-full from lolling around out there
for so long. It’s been a day or two, you see,
since he first laid back and let the earth hold him. 

So, how about it, God? he asks. Are you willing
to heal me? I’ve broken so many parts 
I can’t do recovery any more. I’ve got cornstalk slivers

somehow in my back, somehow the dirt 
in my hair is coming to life, somehow last night’s rain
didn’t do a thing to clean me or quench my thirst.

God, meanwhile, is listening with only half an ear
to this. There’s a giant gap in Creation
that needs filling and this is just wind whistling through.

When God speaks at last it’s only to say, 
oh me. Oh my. Get up, beloved. You’re mistaken
if you see me in your details. I dwell elsewhere.

If you want to heal, forget about them. Get up and grab a shovel.
Look at the big picture. Pitch in and help re-weave the rip in the canvas.
Don’t blame me for the little cuts, the thirst, your wormy head;

just stand up and stop asking me to do all the work.
Spring after winter, fall after summer; that’s mine.
Tilling, planting, tending, harvest are yours. Get up.

To be lost
in a pocket
like a key or
an urgently needed coin
and know that
someone’s trying
to find you

To be right there
between their fingers
and have them 
impossibly fumble you
back into the dark

To be sought
then remain unfound
in a pocket or
a deep bag
riding on the hip
of someone
seeking you
calling for you
although they know
you are right there
with them

is to find
the hole
in the dark
in the cloth
and fall through 
to the hard floor
in the hope
that the sound
of you hitting hard
will serve to announce
your presence to those
searching for you
before they move on

Who needs a reason
to be naked
in their own
summer bed?

A heat wave ought to be enough
to make you happy
to choose the exposure
but here you go again, rationalizing,

telling yourself 
that if you die in your sleep
it won’t matter to you
if they find you like this and

it’s so ridiculous
to think you’ll be forced
to rise from bed and fight
a home invader:

if they kill you naked
you’ll be as dead as
if you were clothed;
if you kill them

you’ll certainly have time to dress
before the coroner
and the police arrive — 
or you can choose to be found

in your just recently savage,
still bloodstained skin,
still clutching the bayonet
you keep by the bedside

or the baseball bat 
you keep by the bedroom door
against such an unlikely 
invasion of privacy. 

Sleep naked, then. You clearly
already have found enough
to worry about and no one’s
here to see or care.

The elders have told us
the moon is not fully at home

in the sky. Whenever it
vanishes it is because

it sinks to its true home
under the waters. 

Ever since I learned this 
I have been throwing myself into ponds, 

seeking the moon on lightless nights, 
but have never found anything. 

I have lately been eyeing
the ocean as a place to look:

the ocean, full of its own light 
at times but more often darker;

full of life, full of death, full of
whatever it is

that makes me long to dive in,
and if I don’t come back up?

Don’t assume I’ve found
the moon. It may be that instead

I’ve found the reason the moon leaves us,
and I’ve made that my reason as well.

you were saucy
once upon a time

in love with all
the damned objects

tingling if you heard
anyone mention Satan

forbidding the term
“adulting” from your discourse

except in complaint or
humble brag 

you were easy-wild
once in a while 

sat up all night
cybersexing distant names

with one hand
from a close-up screen

while below you in the family room
you thought of as hell

the others sat feet apart
and never talked at all

you were busy
back in the day

with a life no one but you
claimed to want for you

they almost had you convinced
you were the crazy one with your

black leather and star studs
it felt wrong to them that you brought them

into the chamber of orange plaid upholstery
and something soothing on the stereo

you were something
you were onto something

I’d like to see
the world become
as bright as corn
and as sweet

As shiny as
a sword fallen
to the ground
when dropped
by the soldier
running to embrace
their child

I’d like to taste it
and find it
as sharp and thrilling
to the back of my throat
and the front of my head
as a good whisky
after a terrible day

There have been days
where I could see how
it holds itself
above our slash and burn
Where the liquid churn
of the feeder’s many
starling voices
made me forget
they are another part
of the problem
we’ve made for ourselves

It’s too hot already and
it’s barely sunrise
but a good sunrise it is

In the time left
it’s grand to see the ailing world
still able to be as bright as corn
solid as song
strong as a Scotch in the soul
ready to show us
how great it can still be
and will again be eventually