There must be secret behavior
in the world of whales;
it cannot be otherwise; 
traditions they carry on
that we either do not see
or do not understand
when we do see them;

perhaps a convention they follow
when they begin an ancient song,
similar to saying, “once
upon a time;” a convention that does not
shift from bowhead to gray to humpback;

do they all slow and stop
wherever they are in any ocean
upon hearing it, as if it were
a supplication to those who knew of
Better Times?

Think of whales praying 
somewhere beyond the discernment
of humans. Other beings
suspending themselves in the deep
nearby, hoping the coming grace
will envelope them as well,

holding them
in a place we cannot see
or know.

I  cannot describe
the sound of rain
without referring to rain.
So I can tell you nothing
about the sound of rain 
you don’t already know
except that to me,
rain sounds 
like Friday night
any time or day I hear it.
Rain feels like a prelude
to something expected,
centered and endless,
might be cleansing,
might be flooding,
might never end or
might depart leaving brightness
behind. But what it
sounds like? It sounds like
rain. Like the smell
of how a week ends 
and another begins, even though
there is nothing primeval
about weeks or weekends.
We made those up long after
we learned to recognize
the sound of rain. We made
a lot of things up
once we couldn’t be bothered
to listen, really listen,
to the rain.

Sun after rain,
they say, is inevitable.
Why should we believe that?

The trend of history,
they say, is forever upward.
Why should we believe that?

Trust in the system,
they say, it will right itself.
Why should we believe that?

We’ll get them next time,
they say, if you stick with us.
Why should I believe that?

Because I can see
I believe there are fewer birds here
other than settler sparrows and starlings.

Because I can hear
I believe there are more people
screaming than singing.

Because I can touch
I believe there are waves coming
that will soon swallow entire mythologies.

Because I can smell
I believe in fire and how warm
the perfume from the Arctic’s become.

Because I can taste
I believe there is blood in our food,
on my tongue, in my distended belly.

We’ve got a plan,
they say, but it will take time.
Why should I believe there is time?

Because we decay and have decayed.
Because I am not alone in what I sense.
Because I have seen how little of what they say

ever comes true. 
Sun after rain begets rain begets
weariness, history drowns, the system is just

a way of praying
that I do not believe 
was built to do this work. 

Some people actually are serene; 
self actualized, purely aligned.
They are legends of contentment,
sit daily with their pain well in hand, 
and are still.

I am glad for their existence.
Their stories give off such hope
and if they feel such hope themselves,
then truly, I am at peace with these stories
and what can they do for others.

I sit too, on and among bricks
rubbled up in bone-breaking piles,
blackened by a long fire that started
before I was born and continues
to flare from time to time, but I do not move.

Tell me where I am supposed to go,
I ask the ones at peace. They say I need
go nowhere, that peace is found within
or nowhere. This is nowhere, I respond.
Come sit with me where I live. They do not come.  

All life is suffering, they chide and chant
from a safe distance while the fire
I live with is licking at their walls. I could teach them
how to stand the coming days of sitting in rubble
while alternating screams and shrugs, 

but they won’t come over here and I can’t
get there, no matter how I try, no matter
how I try to rebuild this house to look like theirs
it burns again. So I sit here. All life is suffering.
Easy to say from over there, but I am here.

Let the great bear of my history 
come seeking me by intuition
once I have put enough into the world
that my trace is pure, strong, and available.

Let the great bear of my history
come to me some August night
as I sit on my porch and imagine 
the scent of next spring’s lilacs.

Let the great bear of my history
stand before me, stinking of my past
mingled with the past of the world
beyond this one until all smells of the future. 

Let the great bear of my history
raise me in its arms and crush me
into the void, and let my body
be buried and forgotten soon after.

Let the great bear of my history
grant me the gift of the scent of lilacs
as a final memory, sparking the desire
to return by spring. 

Let me come back as a bear
foraging for history since that moment,
running up and down hills
in rejection of myths, flavoring the air.

Let me be the bear for another,
a wonder-filled being on a porch,
thinking of some good thing yet to come;
let me become the Bear, the Lilac Bear.

He has lived from the start
as a hospital
taking in all
sick arrivals

Lining them up
so deep in his hallways
he can’t help but stumble
between chronic and acute

Rough way to live
he tells himself whenever
the crush of illness inside him
becomes nearly intolerable

Followed at once by
a sigh and a shrug
Reminds himself
it was his choice to let them in

and his fault entirely
that he’s so damn full
of such pestilence that
he can’t walk straight or think 

healthy thoughts
Looks up at the pictures
of his family on the walls
The founders of the institution  

The ones who set the mission
on its path
He trips over an old corpse
and chokes on the facts

It’s not their fault I’m a hospital
he tells himself
I ought to be used to this
by now and the fact that I’m not

is my fault too then he
pulls himself up by the gurneys
and bounces on down the corridor
answering pages and praying

he will code

Joe the Cancer
was preparing a hot meal
to eat off my belly, as if I was
his table, or perhaps
a paper plate to be discarded
when his meal was done.

I pushed him off and 
thought I had done
enough for all time when
from the corner near the house
I heard him hooting out
his longing for my lungs,

and now I think about Joe the Cancer
more often than I think about
love or baseball, listening for his
hardly subtle song of yearning

and ignoring the now irrelevant
snap of a ball into a leather glove
that used to be, for me,
the perfected sound of triumph.

This gargantuan blood stain 
that we call a nation
covers a landscape of long-ago love and sex,
generations working through sorrow and laughter.

By this rock someone once offered a prayer
for forgiveness for the hurt they’d given to another.

That prayer is still here, drowned in blood.
Some of us are trying to clean it off and let it fly
and add our own prayers for what we’ve done
and what’s been done in our name,

using words so browned and hardened
they can barely rise; but still, we try. It’s that, or die.

Two voices
asking me ordinary questions
at the same time
while I’m trying to check
the status of this
ordinary dinner and keep myself
ordinary till it’s over.

I fail.

Twin storms suddenly
in here with me,
one by each side, beating
blue light out of me
until each breath
tastes like lightning
and sets extraordinary fire
all around. 

To want is to break. 
If you are broken already, 
if you’ve been broken before,
to want is then to seek healing 
through wanting 
and once you are healed,  
to want is then to break
once again.

Don’t you feel at times
that endlessly chasing desire
is an ambulance ride 
taken over and over again 
to a hospital where every time 
a different doctor
just shakes their head 
and mutters about
fools never learning  
as you’re wheeled in? 

To want is to break. 
You’ve been broken before
so often that what you mostly want 
is permanent healing,
but there you are, 
as boringly broken as ever
and once you are healed 
it doesn’t last;
to want is to break
again and again; how often
does this have to be said? 

Don’t you feel at times
that this pursuit of desire
is cutting off your cast
from previous breaks too soon,
pushing recent atrophy 
to its limit and beyond 
until you fall again,
unable to walk,
resigned to your pain, 
just as you always have?

To breathe is to want
and to want, you tell yourself,
is to break, so you break. 
To keep breathing is to admit
you want healing for your wanting.

To catch your breath for a moment
and imagine what it will be like
when you stop wanting permanently
is to break eventually,
gasp, bend back into breathing
and wanting; it’s an unfamiliar
form of healing,
something unlike what happens 
in an ambulance on your way
to a shrug of dismissal 
and your chagrinned ride home
after that.

To break a cycle
of wanting
and healing from want
is to lie down broken
and refuse attention
until you’re alone
with your fracture
and see at last
how far you’ve come
on your once-fragile,
now-bolstered limbs. On your
forever-being-splinted bones. 
On whatever this is
that your desire 
has made of you.