THE DEFENSE RESTS

At this point, God 

must be 

absolute-

ly sick of me 

telling him 

all about the sparrows 

and trees.

What did you think 

you were doing? 

he'd say. 

I'd say: it takes a lot 

of faith 

to just describe 

the things you come upon 

in a prosaic 

way when one 

leaf shot-through 

with dawn sun 

is staggering 

enough to 

make you scream—

what is anything!?

THE NAME OF THE GAME

We like to think 

affection will make

absence shrink away,

but the consequence 

of tenderness is never 

abolition. Love works 

more like a caretaker—

an animal husband 

to savage distance; 

it does not kill or 

outlaw, just declaws 

our separation; 

for the sake 

of preservation it 

succors the herd—first

it feeds, then trains 

and breeds it. In a word: 

domestication. 

A SUBURBAN CONJURING

From the hedges
on the banks of the muddy
Dunkin’ drive-thru,

the sparrows chanting
“come and get it”

with a hunger
for spring rains, not donut-
combo breakfasts—

for locusts 

and wild honey, in fact; 

not that they 

could ever show it.

but forget about baptism 

by water, or coffee 

in the courtyard 

of the shopping plaza,

and never mind 

the incantations

carved in the cliffs 

of the distant auto mall:

"Good credit, 

bad credit,
no credit?" Hell,

if you were really getting
life right, you
wouldn’t even know it.

CATALYST

It sounds so 

innocuous 

when you say it 

like this: 

our prehistoric 

antecedents—

those eagerest primitive 

pieces of us—

were thermodynamic 

processes, 

catabolic molecules, made 

to break down acceleration; 

they ate up time 

and distances 

and breathed out rates 

of change

in increasingly warm 

and rapid waves, til 

the great grid of tireless 

innovation caught fire—

then the tires 

of the car—

then the back seat—

then the kids. 

CREATION MYTH

Particles 

of astonishment 

flood the gap between 

"I" and "am." 

Matter 

and its anti-; 

positivity 

and its pre-

requisite opposite, 

which must, as a rule, 

repel one another—yet 

here we all 

sit anyway, 

casual as Friday,

comfy as ever. 

*

Still bearing the stigmata 

of such deliberate precision, 

keen pithy snatches 

of some meditation mantra 

play around the collective 

nouns that we've 

come to call our faces, 

making them gorgeous 

as fractal images:

matrices 

of galaxies, say;

or heaventree heads 

of Roman-

esco broccoli?

*

We go forth 

and name things

to know 

where we stand. 

We shake things up 

and leave the house 

for the sake 

of getting back. 

this is not 

profundity—this is 

just its traces. 

CRUELTY REFINES

On the subject of tough love, 

much to hear this 

time of year 

from the mute cold throats 

of the rough 

fruitless bushes 

which crouch low 

and hold their ragged 

breath in the wind 

while a whole mess 

of sparrows—all 

hunger pangs and urges—

whinges now for shelter 

and sugar 

in their branches: 

never mind 

what "speaks to you." 

It's all about what could—

but chooses 

not to. 

VOICE LESSON

As if any further 

proof was needed 

that truth and beauty 

come in particles 

and waves—

rough but discrete 

and mercifully light, 

a song behaves

like a handy palliative 

used to modulate 

one's tolerance to life—

whereas 

singing itself 

is a very different catalyst; 

like a whittling knife 

to basswood, it's the honing 

of routine 

through rigorous daily 

practice

to a thing that feels 

sleek, but looks 

preposterous.