NEVERTHELESS

Every day, once a day,
I get the urge 

to do the impossible:

to save what must leave,

to give weight to words

(though I make no claim

to understand
what they name)

and a hope-like shape
to tumultuous thought.

Is it reckless? Is it vein?
I ought to say 

I don’t care.

But if you think about it,
the very fact
that this poem appears here,

lying patient as a snare
in the middle of this page

(or this screen, or wherever)—

and eager to catch
that which must pass away

already betrays
that I do anyway.

deny it as I might,

the urge to write—

the compulsion
to tell someone

has somehow caught me
unaware that I’m sure

there's no such thing

as an art
of despair.

MORTALITY

A cheap store-bought wind chime

(though no less

hungry for the breeze);

its many small lapping tongues

of bell bronze

or bell brass—

or hell, I 

don’t know, of prefab

fiberglass, perhaps—

making me forget 

as I pass underneath

what silence sounds like—

then remember (however 

temporarily)

what it means.

DAWN SKETCH

Out from the shadows,
a new morning is growing

in the window—like the shores 

of another, alien world 

unfurled for the first time 

at the calm of low tide,

salved by the balm
of a prophecy unheralded

and washed in colors
never seen before by anyone—

except perhaps by the first eye

to get squeezed shut 

at night beneath some 

primordial lid.

Does a word exist for this 

new twist on existence?

The other side of night
is daylight, sure, 

but the other side

of darkness in its essence—

would that be called clearness?
Invisibility? In any case,

it must be a color 

worth savoring, because it's 

a color we haven’t 

got a name for.

THE ENCOUNTER

I swear, when I wrote this

I didn't know
who would be reading—

but then again, 

I must have known roughly

how it would go, since

I could picture you singing

the tune in your head—
line after line, 

never rushing, never stumbling,

not stopping until 

you got to the end—

as if you knew which word 

should come next 

by heart,

because you and I 

were the same.
Not entirely, of course,

 
but close enough

to look the part.

It was as if our two souls 

shared a shadow; as if, 

for half a minute there,

we were so busy

that we wouldn't have

remembered, if asked, 

what our names were.

And I realized

when I'd finished that

that was what I wanted;

the words didn't matter.

It wasn’t quite art—but it was 
a good start.

NEW POETICS

I don't know how 

Aristotle managed 

to miss this, 

but: catharsis 

is gradual;

I mean, it’s 

every little 

blade of a tear

carving-out 

an opening—

ruining your precious 

metal content 

bit by bit

by repeatedly exposing 

some of it 

to the air—but

by doing so, 

in the long run

saving you 

the hassle 

of keeping it all 

together 

and making space 

there.

NOW

All I pretend to own, 

you loaned me; 

all that I know 

or care for 

has only just appeared here—

without my seeing 

how it came, or 

from where.

And when you bear it away—

as I believe you must do

because you have told me so 

repeatedly before—

I suppose I do not have 

to wonder 

what time it will be 

when that happens, either. 

NOT FROM CONCENTRATE

How many hundreds 

of millions 

of years have been 

forcibly focused 

through just-this-second's 

lens—and then,

never to be used 

again, discarded as the pulp 

of the spurious past? 

What a terrible 

waste, in fact, that 

that which is now must be 

squeezed-fresh continuously 

from all that has ever happened—

not to mention

how little hope there is 

for this moment's 

perseverance, since 

every hard-won is that ever was 

didn't last much 

past its own definition.