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. 

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.

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. 

OSMOTIC FLOW

As water moves 

through ground-

up coffee—corpuscle

by corpuscle:

the littlest peace

of mind.

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? 

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? 

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.