MUTE SWAN

Perhaps the only 

extant creature 

to have successfully 

upended the belief 

in her own body, 

she alone knows—

to catch the wild quiet 

and keep it 

is harder 

than it seems at first. 

And perhaps, 

to achieve this, 

she has spent her life picturing 

a breath 

without limits,

a breadth 

with no length, 

a burst far beyond 

the bounds of sound and color 

too haphazard 

to ever have been 

intended. 

But more likely, 

she has learned 

in the monochrome fire 

of repetition

how to forge 

a more effortless noise 

with neither the desire 

nor the need 

to make another. 

 

THE IMPERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

Viewing their star 

from increasingly far 

as the explosion 

we live in 

rides the spine of everything

each night will add 

just another 

milligram to hell.

As if the ghosts 

that swam in these shells 

could not possibly find 

their way home 

without reminding 

that matter can neither 

be created nor destroyed,

that the gaping 

void is no match 

for mathematics.

And so, we try to focus 

on the faith that our facts 

persist without us; 

gradually, 

we learn not to be 

afraid of growing distance—no, 

it's the tiniest 

change in brightness 

that shatters us. 

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?