Dark Matter

In the decayed eyes
of the recently dead
sparrow

(who likely hit my window
when I was not home and fell
to the mulch below and lay there
unnoticed until
I went out to replenish
the swift-emptying feeders
tha brought it here)

is everything that is coming:
vision sinking into the bones
that supported it
that will disappear
in their own time and 
feed whatever is next

I felt deep sorrow
and offered my apology
for making it so easy
to indulge hungers that
in the end it led to
your unexpected death

then I
refilled the feeders

in the correction
of faults there is
an opportunity
to diminish the
need to repeat
the behaviors that
led to the faults
but since so often
a fault is just 
the side effect of
an overused strength 
one must take care
not to weaken
what you are at core
in an effort to create
perfection where none
can exist

take for instance
a volcano bleeding
flowing rock and hot ash
doing what it was
made to do 
when it stops for good
the people move in and 
make a life on top of
its scars and skin as if
its seeming extinction
was purposeful and good until
when it shifts 
in its sleep
the people scream as if
betrayed when all that’s happened
is what has always happened

see
when a man falls apart
he may well fall
back into himself then
double down and surge
into the same forms as before
he cracked 

magma is magma
no matter when
it finds its way
blows out
of the cracks

If a dark chocolate
ice cream cone
appears in mid-air
between you and a child 
in danger, you will 
no doubt push the cone aside
as you rush to the child’s
salvation.

If the sobbing child
is comforted when you
turn back to seize the cone
and give it to them,
you will eventually convince yourself
this has all been 
preordained and that you
were indispensable here. 

You will cease questioning
the appearance of the cone
in the crisis moment, assuming
a divine intervention or
alignment of planes
created this, and you
will feel no horror
that a child
may have been endangered
just to help you feel special,
that magic was forced into service
just so you could feel heroic,
and that the anti-gravitational nature
of the final piece of the scenario
was a conjuring that had a meaning
beyond the moment; that you 
were in fact a means to an end and
as much a mere cog 
within the situation
as all the rest
of its elements were.

The rejected being
was appointed to
a special committee
examining the status of 
healthy creatures. 

The press photo of them all together
in their meeting room was
lovely enough: everyone smiling
broadly, any tension in their eyes
probably a result of bad lighting.

The rejected being took it as
a small step toward acceptance
that the camera
picked them up at all 
as there had been periods

of utter invisibility
in their career. Times when
they knew they’d been at the table,
had done good work, been acknowledged
in the group, and then disappeared

from view almost as soon
as the work was wrapped up
and tied in a neat bow.
(Theirs was the finger
in the center of the bow.)

When the rejected being
suggested early on that the alleged health
of healthy creatures was
in many ways a confidence game, 
the others nodded as if

a nod was better than the wink would be
to a long-dead, well-beaten horse. 
After that, the rejected being could smell
dead horse permeating the meeting room
so often it seemed that

there must be mountains of them
somewhere nearby, invisible
as the rejected being had once been.
They began to speak less of the stench, 
spent meeting time staring

at the press photo
hung so prominently 
behind the head of the table,
where the chair couldn’t see it
at all.

Raptor alone on high:
dull-black speck

against sky
a shade of deep yearning.

Somehow both bird and observer,
I am seeing myself up there:

alone, seeking,
soaring, desperately

not looking straight down
as if seeing myself there

so far away
from what I desire

would initiate
a dive to solid death

for both
seeker and watcher.

Cloud of unknowing:
a hospital bed. A hallway
full of sounds
likely meant for others
or perhaps this time for you,
the voices of better angels
come to give you comfort.

Cloud of unknowing:
the ceiling above, the 
holes in the tiles that likely
lead nowhere except for the One
that opens into a tiny gateway
to the peace that may be waiting
when you leave.

Cloud of unknowing:
when you rise from forgetting
to an awareness of how little
is in your control but you decide
to rest while you can. You will
return to the world soon enough
but for now, you choose
the cloud where all you can do
is wait, and marvel, and heal.