ON SECOND THOUGHT,

in this spherical geometry, 

a straight line 

is a lie—

is actually a slight smile 

or sneer; 

it may even 

intersect itself 

after a while. 

For Euclid, 

this was heresy. 

To be emissary 

of the kingdom 

and still be allowed to see it—

that is just

too much. 

It's a beatitude to be 

so near 

to the truth 

and not be allowed 

to touch it. 

*

I'd have to say 

it's rather odd, but, 

during one certain hour of the morning, 

the mind is a vacant lot; 

the few hawks 

that drift high above 

would have to be 

its thoughts. 

The arbitrary relation 

of the sign to the signified—

ominous, 

but not urgent;

eerie, but benign;

lifeless, and so 

deathless—maybe that

was god.

TALKING TO MYSELF

"What is there left

to say?" I mutter;

existence 

is incurrence 

of impression (viz: 

of debt).

*

A bit 

far-fetched, but it 

feels good 

to be called 

as material witness 

to the voiceless obsessed; 

to next spring 

and last winter 

colliding with each other 

and hopscotching birds 

that seem to disappear 

around the corner 

of the Earth; 

to the hide 

and seek 

of rivulets 

which traipse 

through mud 

like hieroglyphs. 

There is always something 

new to read, however 

crude or tenuous. 

No wonder 

this attention can 

never be spent;

this duty to desire 

can never be absented; 

this ache to ask 

questions can never

be addressed. 

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.