Let’s be very quiet
this year — no words.

If there’s an answer called for,
let our askers wait for it.

If they insist,
we should walk away.

If we cannot walk away,
let’s stare back without a sound

and watch them wriggle
in their seats,

trying to figure out 
how they’ll get by

without us engaged
in answering only

the questions 
they choose.

So many questions
and answers

remain unheard,
including our own;

let’s be very quiet.
Let’s listen to those.

Let’s be quiet.
There have been

enough words from us;
anything we need to say is

already out there
on the wind.  In the air.

On the sidewalks.
In the streets. In the spaces

between their questions
and their desired answers.

Here’s to you,
obvious minefield.

Here’s to you, dark clouds
and silver lightning. 

Here’s to your reputation,
established before you begin —

but also to your falling in love again
with possibility.  

Here’s to where you stand on today
today, here’s to stepping up

to a stand you’ll take tomorrow
for tomorrow.

Here’s to your yesterday. 
May it be yesterday. May it stay yesterday;

may it remind and inform but never,
ever repeat.

Is there something else
I should do?

Is there someone else inside me
whose shadow I glimpse now and then?
Someone so different
from who I think I am that in fact
it’s a new person or an old one,
and I do not know a thing about them,
someone utterly not what I am?

Is there something else
I should do?

What work is there to do
that is not being done better
by others, work I cannot do
because I would only be in the way
of those doing it?

Is there something else
I should do?

Should I be turning the Work
over to the person inside
who is not me, or to a person
outside who is not me?

Is there something else
I should do?

Will there ever be a poem
from my pen 
that does not include 
a question?  Will there ever be
a day that does not include
the nagging sense of there being
a question I haven’t asked
that I should ask, its answer
notwithstanding;

is there something else
I should do?

Is there a question
I should be asking, one
that I can’t answer ever,
one where
the pursuit of the answer
is all there is?

If anyone thinks this poem
is about writing poetry — should I 
disabuse them of the notion?
Should I strike them or laugh
as I flee from them, or

is there something else
I should do?

Praise today for the pancreas 
that’s killing me, for the blood
unbalanced, for the ache
in my right knee that thwarts
me, for the hairs that won’t stay
in my head, leaping out like rats 
who know the score;
praise them all for doing
exactly what they should be doing
in my disrepair; there’s nothing wrong here
that a good old grave won’t cure;
really, there’s no other cure
for what drives it all; I can manage
and maintain and stave off and 
fleetingly deny, but in the end 
there is only the End, so praises
for the End, here’s to settling in for it,
here’s to how I am now slowed
to think and feel differently
as this body slows and shifts; 
praise for the acceptance of this age,
praise for the acceptance of this fight
as ultimately futile
yet worth every stroke and blow I land
as a tribute to how much I have loved
and fiercely pursued love and life
in all the years
of damage I’ve done to myself;
praise to that wounded, bloated game-piece
I call my body, with its hitman organs,
its fatal surges of desire and satisfaction;
praise to how this all is closing down
over a long time, giving me so much
to consider, to savor,
to curse, to praise.

When gawking at ruins
in far off lands, when taking

photos of them and of 
the picturesque locals

for your collections,
please remember

that each person you see
is in their own way also a ruin:

beautiful, vital and worthy
of attention and respect

from you, still here and surviving
right where they were placed,

yet still a ruin
in terms of not being today

what they might have become if,
too often, armies and generations

of people like your own had not come
and swept all before them 

into collections
of their own.

When I was a whale
I met many other whales,
so many other whales;
I traveled and fed
and spoke and sang
with so many other whales.

Then the rebirth wheel turned
and we are all humans,
somehow; perhaps human is
a required level
where all whales go 
when they die;
all I know is that
I’ve dried out into this husk 
of my once immersed self,

trapped in thoughts
of swimming as we all once did
through dark and light, through
polar cold and tropical warmth,
submerged for long hours,
emerging to breach now and then
and singing, always singing.

I’ve tried to keep some of that alive 
in this shrunken afterlife,
seeking out those who still sang,
those who still found moments
to breach and dive
where and when they could,
but it has not been easy;

perhaps the lesson
of this level is that 
it is not natural
to have to work so hard
to find a song
in the day to day
and then to sing it,
and we should
never have taken it
for granted.

Clarity’s a Bear
walking
on dark soil,

paws
clearly
finding their way,

sure footed,
slow,
direct

in spite of
twists and 
dips in the Path.

Now then: you may follow 
the Bear safely
from a distance

using only its tracks
in the Earth,
or

get closer to it
and be less certain
of yourself, 

your safety, 
how far you have to go.
You will be

in Bear moment,
where Clarity has its 
dangers — but

what rewards,
what rewards from 
being there.

“Don’t be afraid of breaking.
Remember, a broken window doesn’t
need to be opened.”

This is how I am greeted
by the daily mail —
with a well-meant and empty platitude

that makes me laugh and rage
about how much else is true 
of a broken window.

I put my head down in my covers
and start a list in response:
remember,

a broken window is not
to be trusted — you can get cut that 
way, you could put an eye out

with a shard from a broken window. A broken
window lets in all manner of pests
and danger.  A broken

window is an excuse for cops to 
enter your life.  A broken window
is the natural track of a brick,

a bullet, a flash-bang, a grenade,
a Molotov cocktail.  A broken window
is a thief of heat and safety.

A broken window makes a sound 
once — it cries out upon being born
and then all you hear after that

is a voice poured through it, a voice
not its own, function of wind
or rain or distress.

A broken window may never
have been meant to be opened.
It may have been a poor church’s

lone glory, or the last line of defense 
for a shivering soul. A broken window
is evidence of a violent change

and you don’t know
what led to it;
maybe you could try helping out

with a dustpan and broom
before offering a philosophy
lesson? Help clean it up. Help.

You will suspect its presence
long before you first see it
drunk under your holiday table,
at first cute and then 
vaguely menacing.

It reminds you at once
of an ancient, shrunken,
once-feared uncle 
discovered snoring harmlessly
in a worn armchair.

Another day you will hear it whispering, 
answering your questions indistinctly 
in a tongue once used exclusively for
fragile treaties, falsely joyful
greeting cards, and scriptures.

You will glimpse it again
hiding behind sun-faded
plastic flowers left behind
in the dirt-speckled front window 
of a defunct store. 

You’re so surprised that it has not come
wrapped in a torn flag, raging flames,
blood-tossed and bellicose.
Is it what it appears to be?
It takes a while for you to name it.

You are curious about
what it may want, why
it’s staying so close, why it won’t
come out brazenly and 
stop you with a word or blow,

not understanding that for you,
it is not going to be
as blunt and heroic
as you’d prefer; instead
it will simply lurk until it is time

then tap you
with a single finger,
say softly, “Now,”
and lead you from here
to There. 

On the way it will say
one more thing:
“Sorry, kid.” You will
eventually agree
that this is better,

but it will take a while to get there.

I am this morning,
even after a night’s sleep,
as tired as a bird 
settling onto
a familiar branch
after migration. 

As we all do when we return
to a long missed home,
birds upon landing look around 
and try to determine 
how it has changed
since last season, but

nothing here looks different
than it did before I slept,
although I spent the night
filtering all I knew through 
long dreams that swooped
over seas and mountains.

It’s a disappointment to see
things have not changed,
but maybe it was a mistake
to dream as a bird,
to have believed in 
my own far sight

and long endurance. 
I’m beginning to think
it all looks the same
because I am microbial, 
was merely carried 
through my dreams by a bird, 

and am still seeing 
the same small landscape 
I was seeing when I began:
roots of feathers,
bumpy skin. Beyond them
are the same distant sea and sky

I can see wherever I am.
Thousands of miles
from where I began, yet still seeing
the same world; it’s enough
to put this germ back to sleep
and decide that there’s no point

in dreaming at all, although I’m certain
that tonight I will again
swing low over gray seas,
carried home to morning
on familiar wings
I have never truly owned.

Waking to wonder why
there’s no answer

to stumble across or
over?

If there’s
a statement here, someone

should make it — 
No. No, I won’t.

Been a sore and sorry night.
Am I staying there forever?

No, but
I’m not

being well today. Forgot
how, forgot

the when of the date
and time, forgot

competent
human being. It’s a

skill, they say —
happiness you have to 

work for.  I’m
underemployed

therefore and
supine in a dank bed — oh

that’s just
a weekday weak day, a

weakened weekend.
Go on without me.

Go. On and in me
is a burnt fuse —

go. It’s dark here
as I am.