GRADUALISM

The way, most days, 

the sunset 

sky elides red—

sliding instead 

from apricot 

to amber

before folding down 

its somber petals 

of lilac, plum, and lavender—

suggests less 

beauty in defying 

expectation

and more 

in this bleary world's 

refusal to accept 

the premise of a difference 

between "do" 

and "don't" expect. 

THE MASS ORDINARY

Everybody sees 

these crimson-

tipped maple leaves—

some plastered 

to the dewy 

grasses near their feet, 

many still clinging 

to senescent 

mother trees 

like fabulous flags 

to decrepit 

poles of memory.

In their own 

low-key way,

everybody senses 

the individuality, 

the novelty 

of each—

and yet, 

nobody thinks 

to make a distinction 

between which leaf 

is which. Isn't 

that interesting? 

SURRENDER

Star-scoured, 

moon-rinsed, 

the air at the window 

is now bell-clear,

and even thought itself 

becomes cheap 

in a world where distant 

branches dangle 

fresh necklaces of condensation 

in scant white rinds of light. 

There is no way 

to get inside 

the alien absurdity of it,

but no way out 

of the moment, either;

no point of reference, 

no view from outside 

of quiet's totality—

and so, for one more 

night at least, 

we slow our breath, let go 

of what we call belief,

and willingly fall 

into labyrinths of sleep.

KENOSIS

I do not write 

to collect 

my thoughts; 

I write to disassemble,

and then spirit 

them away.

As light 

through a glass lake 

will separate and remain 

only as a little heat 

and motion 

in the waves, 

each day, I divide 

and further 

sublimate my mind 

in the hopes that, 

in the end, I'll have 

materialized my soul—

emptied 

my whole self 

out into the world.

No map to unfurl 

of some buried 

cache of interior life;

if no such inner 

life remains—there's 

nothing left to find.

HOW TO MAKE RELIGION

Mix until 

just combined 

(stir, don't shake) 

equal parts lucky 

to be alive 

and dismayed 

by just how profoundly 

it agitates 

that gratitude 

to have no one 

and nothing specific 

to thank. 

KNOWN UNKNOWNS

Acrobatic finches 

pull and tease 

the hackberry branches,

heedless as birthday 

toddlers ripping 

clean through tissue paper—

discrediting so-called 

eyewitness accounts 

of consciousness 

existing 

at the center, 

and not just 

as a dashed-off 

insouciant flourish 

ringed around 

everything's fringes.

*

Where there's a will, 

there's a way—but 

is the converse 

also true? 

Does a "thing to do"

preordain a doer? 

Could the heart persist  

outside of its armor?

For that matter, 

could "outside"

exist—even a little—

if it didn't surround 

that wound 

called "the middle?"

REPEATING OURSELVES

Like those roses which sustain 

their blanching blooms 

clear through October, 

we too 

may now look 

a bit worse for the wear 

as we hold

the last sonorous 

note we'd prepared 

in defiance of the muffling pall 

of a silently 

darkening autumn—

as if virtue consisted 

in our obliviousness 

to criticism 

and praise and thanksgiving 

in our freedom

to do the one thing 

we already know 

how to do 

without thinking.