Here is a cluttered bed
full of open books and sweatclothes
and a man, an unimportant man
who has pushed just enough aside to lie down.  

We’re not too concerned here
with his name, his face, or his history.
Let’s focus on the bed,
a former center of the universe.  

Back in the day this bed was a black hole.
Two would fall in and when they came out
they were transformed, they were somewhere else,
they were in a different time.  Now it’s what’s left

after a black hole collapses on itself. No one 
comes here except to sleep and when he wakes
it’s in exactly the same world and time
as when he laid down, and he hasn’t changed a bit.

In the scheme of things, the bed means little to him now.
Why are we wasting our time on this?  If there’s nothing
to see in the bed, on the bed, why speak of it at all?
He rubs his eyes and glares at us.  Nothing to see here,

get out you freaks, don’t make this into something.
If you want to mountain a molehill
take issue with these windows
which allow so much light to get in here and so early.  

His agitation is understandable yet ultimately
unimportant to us.  Look instead at the bed
covered in flung asides — button down shirts,
magazines, extra pillows.

It explains so much.  This was the former center
of the universe.  Everything came spinning toward
these long unwashed sheets, these broken springs.
That sad man, unimportant, not wanting anyone to see.
 

How far is it, he said,
to Athol from here?
Not sure, I said, I could
look it up for you.

I am surprised at you,
he said,  a little of his fondness for me
starting to leak away.  I am surprised
at you.  You always used to know
your place on this earth
and almost exactly
how close or far it was to any town
within a hundred miles or so
of where you were standing.

Really,
I said, I’m sorry, I don’t remember that
at all.  I’m sorry I have disappointed you.
Ah, he said, won’t be the last time,
or the last time I forgive you either.
You’re my son and maybe you being lost
is my fault.  Not sure I’d know
where I was either
if I had to deal with me.

And with that he shut down and shut up
and we sat together while I tried to recall
how far it might be to Athol
and tore up my brain trying to figure why
that might be of such importance to him
now.

Not a rock
but mostly hard,
more an old candy that
seemed OK to try but
was at once spit for being
mostly nasty,
a little sweet still
yet obviously more sickening.

Not good for you, semblance
of a good thing, model of a 
desire, almost a worthy
undertaking? Ha. 

Big, old.
Gray, big.  
Old, stumbling loud.
Loud, stupid sometimes,
too smart often, but always loud
with smart or dumb.

Big, gray, old, 
loud, smart, dumb:

contradiction contradance contrail, 
chemtrail conspiracy denier. 
den father,
fast companion.  

String a bunch of words.  
Make a bunch of meaning:

look, what he is, is fraudulent.
What he is, is over.
He wants to leave
and is too cowardly.
He wants to change
and is too invested.

He wants his name
to conjure a different candy
and is too late.  

Whenever I witness your sobbing
for people you do not know 
and then see you turn back
to your affairs without thereafter
being at all changed,

I see a wind that stirs dead leaves.
I hear a breaking glacier slump into the sea
and a volcano holding back fire as a lie
is called out, then carved into
a cornerstone. 

Long traveling overland waters
they call rivers, small still overland waters
they call ponds, wide still overland waters
they call lakes, water beyond land
they call seas or oceans.  

Lands
that rise above others, hills;
highest rise lands are mountains,
sunken lands, valleys.
Wide oceans of land
are called plains.  

They call their own clusters
cities, suburbs, towns, villages. 
They cluster everywhere, in groups,
near any waters or far from them,
almost everywhere they can stand.

All the groups
call themselves something that means
we the people.  
They call the other groups,
not the people.

They hurt each other.
I think it is on purpose they do,
oddly enough.
They call out a lot of names
while hurting each other,
all different sounds,
though all mean the same.

If I hurt them, though,
impartially, 
not meaning to but doing it 
casually,
popping a mountain or 
raising a sea or wind or rain
enough to soak
or drown them
in fire or wet,

when they call out then?
Oddly, all the noise they make
sounds the same.

I am walking to a far country
with stones in both shoes.

People say I’m an emigrant or an immigrant, 
depending on where they are standing.
There are those among them who wish to know
why I don’t stop and remove the stones,
and others who don’t care if I ever do.

As everything I’ve described is imaginary
but real as well, I’m told I should turn my attention
to the answers.

The country I am leaving? What name should it be called?
The destination?  Should it be revealed at all?
The stones? Does it matter if they are large or small? 
Should I stop and take them out or learn to suffer well?

See?
The journey’s now thoroughly interrupted
with this over-fastidious attention.

If you expect every traveler
to know these things,
how will travel ever again
be worthy of our time?

when asked

“how are you doing”

she realizes
that certain phrases
poke and prod at a tenderness
similar to that found around
any other wound 

now
she’s lying in the half-empty bed and
she can’t stop touching it herself 

it is hot to the finger tip
feels ready to explode 
sobbing seems to soothe it for a few minutes
or hours until

something else — junk mail perhaps
stamped with a once familiar name
or the slant of light on the vacant end
of the old couch
stabs it again

“how are you doing”
“how are you doing”
“how are you doing”

tenderly spoken
apparently taken well 
even as they rasp across 
what remains unhealed

we say she seems to be 
doing as well as can be
expected
but then again
we say a lot of things
we never bother to examine

Human, offer your big dumb love
for all stones:
the ones we climb, the ones we carve,
the ones we throw.

Keep your mouth shut, novice.  Don’t speak
if you want to know what to do here.
Listen to the gray whisper of stone
and follow directions.  

Maybe you are meant
to climb the largest ones, freestyling up
past ever-present death
without making a mark upon them. 

Maybe you’re destined to build
garden walls, fortress walls, paved roads;
prisons, temples, or something
that serves as both?

Maybe you are supposed to cut them
until they represent another thing
in its heaviest incarnation.  Maybe
you are fated to release the deities inside.

Or maybe you’re supposed
to hurl the small ones at perceived danger,
perceived food, perceived enemies.
Maybe you will turn them into sharp weapons

with well placed blows, one against another.
Will you recreate all the millions of years
we’ve already spent learning these things?  
Human, it’s hard to avoid — the big dumb love

we have for stone carries us there.  For now
put your face on the boulder in the path, 
cheek to its cool black nubble.  Pick up
a piece from the ground and slip it 

into your pocket.  Carry it around with you,
worry it with your thumb and maybe
after a long time it’ll be smoother 
than when you started — and still 

it will look not much different
than when you started, and if you lose it
or toss it it will wait, or not, for the next pocket,
the next slingshot, the next place it is needed.

Trust me when I say it will tell the next human
who finds it nothing about you
you would recognize as being your story,
but it will be your story nonetheless.  

My face
has been spanked by
a child today,

as gently as
a kitten might do,
simply for suggesting

said child needed
more years on the ground
before contesting certain things;

I took it well, I think,
which is to say
that after allowing said kitten

to bat and paw,
I set the argument aside
and walked away…

believe me, though,
when I say 
it left me staring 

at a tiger’s big bad claws
retracting into my fingers,
a fantasy of blood on my teeth.

I need not mention
the oil-rainbow sheen
of the rock dove’s
feathers.

I have no obligation
to praise the sea
as it needs no praise 
to continue carving the earth
at its margins.

If I were forbidden
to speak of them
the abandoned strawberries
in the broken pot
would thrive or not
anyway.

I say these things
as a way
to keep myself 
here.  I am 
profoundly unnecessary
to all of these
and to so much more:

to almost all, in fact.

What surprising joy there is
in admitting it!