Wednesday, April 16, 2025

THEME AND VARIATION

When the keynotes
and leitmotifs drafted 
in dreams 

begin to seem tedious 
and overly repetitive,

perhaps that is when 
we're impelled 
to wake up 

and witness afresh 
how the many rooms 
of consciousness 

also incessantly 
urge and repeat. 

*

It's a curious thing
to feel 
disarmed by duplication—

the copy-pasted nodding 
heads of daffodils 
beside the path, 

or the headlong rush 
of grackle songs unspooling 
from the cool penumbra. 

From what 
have we just been 
relieved or exempted? 

As often, the pith 
of feeling will not bear 
articulation. 


Tuesday, April 15, 2025

EXPLORING

Behind the convenience store, 
oblivious to me, 

a cadre of shrieking 
laughing gulls 

heedlessly scavenges 
the disarrayed trash, 

finding nothing precious there—
other than the difficulty 

of taking themselves, or one 
another too seriously. 

*

We like to believe 
that effort 
is accumulated,

but the truth is 
it's negotiated, moment 
by moment.

Satisfaction, equanimity—these 
are loss leaders,
lagging indicators. 

To receive 
our daily bread 
is blissfully bearable, but 

to forage it
instead? Nothing 
could be trickier. 


At long last, you 
discover: the fact of the matter

is, at best, an atlas. 
Whereas 

its reality 
is a landmass—

a pristine 
island Eden—

a country with no roads.


Monday, April 14, 2025

SPRING PSYCHOANALYZED

It's a peculiar thrill
the way the nascent 
season teases us—

advances, then retreats; 
pronounces, 
then repeats—

as if it somehow 
gets us off to see 
uncertainty made manifest.

This disarrayed mix 
of encouraging breezes 
and hectoring sleet 

must bring to mind 
our own haste 
and reluctance—

those sides of us 
which are not content 
with the surety of stasis, 

which crave a container
for their own 
ambivalence 

and find nothing 
hotter than the lack 
of intent. 


Friday, April 11, 2025

OSMOTIC FLOW

As water moves 
through ground-

up coffee—corpuscle
by corpuscle:

the littlest peace
of mind.


Thursday, April 10, 2025

JUST GUESSING

If nothing 
needed doing, what 
would I do?

Without an observer 
to despise 
or enjoy me, 

would my need to deploy one 
make me chattel 
or deity? 

For a ghost, 
there's no such thing 
as friction 

(though of course, I'm 
just guessing); 
Likewise, 

for a photon, 
no time passes 
as it wends and twists 

its way 
through the infinite 
vacuum of space. 

If what I resist most 
is just emptiness 
and void, 

how would 
not resisting it feel 
any different? 


Wednesday, April 9, 2025

DISCREPANCY

Some chords 
seem to naturally 
resolve themselves to others, 

while a few 
sound stranded 
no matter what you do. 

Some people you know 
are like that too; 

some words 
you send 

mean even less to them  
than their displeasure—

while others, much more 
than you intend,

trembling
like malleable bits 
of unearned treasure. 

but then—who gets to say
how much 
things mean,

or even—
what units 

should be used 
to make the measure? 


Tuesday, April 8, 2025

INSTINCT

Smitten 
by the heretofore 
derelict sun, 

warblers flood 
the lawn, repeating 

the only note 
they know by heart—

as if 
serving the light
by taking dictation—

as if the world's 
most transcendent art 

were to wring 
every last bit 
of tartness from it,

leaving, thereby, 
only sweetness behind. 

And perhaps, 
some canny witness 
may say 

that to act out of impulse 
can never be sublime—

that there is no transcendence 
in quotation 
of a known text. 

And all I could say 
would be that I 
agree: 

there is only 
every implication.