GLOAMING

Words 

cannot place it

the littlest hairs 

in an ear 

cannot miss it

the larger-than-life shadows 

of the gaunt noisy crows 

careening west over scabrous 

textures cannot save it—

the opacity 

the density 

the trueness of the day 

the moment just before 

it starts to be called

night.

REST

Only once 

it was over 

did life come, 

as a teeter totter,  

to be hung 

at its

simplest equilibrium.

In the midst 

of the jostling 

and the opposition 

and the leverage, 

was it much

too much fun?

or just too difficult

to admit—

I was much closer 

in position

to the 

rest of us

than I wasn't.

BESIDES

There are so many things 

I only think 

I understand

until I stop and consider—

this life, 

overexamined, 

overrefined, 

overdetermined.

These trees 

I brush past 

in a flurry every morning 

which have stood here 

unafraid of the ignorant

wind for much longer,

never wondering, 

when will this rain end—

where does the sun go—

what else is there?

LEADING TONE

If you spend 

a minute to think 

more about it, 

no minute 

is ever the last

minute, since  

there's always 

another minute 

waiting behind it. 

Every last note 

in the scale leads back 

to the tonic.

So what if 

the fate of this 

planet is definite?

time is still 

infinite; new ticks 

will kick old ticks 

off the clocks 

for the rest of it. 

Even the last moment

of your life 

is not the end of it:

what you think 

of as "terminal"

is really just

penultimate.

INCUMBENT

Though you say 

you want nothing, 

you continue to wait—

like a refugee waits.

Though you maintain 

that you're finished, 

that you just want 

to leave, 

you continue to think

that a shape with no center

is a Cartesian waste 

of Euclidean space.

Though you cannot sleep, 

you still could not dream 

the half of this harrowing 

state if you tried;

its expressways, riddled with 

their nondescript exits 

are so familiar 

you could drive without eyes, 

but the great and gripping 

strangeness 

of the place you were made 

will beg you to stay.

MOUSETRAP

My eyesight now—

and my conviction 

that it's never too late 

to be taught;

the light of October

as I trudge on, lost in thought—

all bound-up and shrouded 

in swaths of cloudy gauze;

the sweetgum trees 

at the end of the street—

weeping without discretion 

their yellowed spears of leaves;

their faint shoulders passing 

my bleak eyes in the rain, 

slumped already with the dolor

of a thousand grim winters.

This world 

is a mousetrap. 

A wily seduction—

things seem weaker than they really are. 

HOUND DOG

Whatever chills your warm-

blooded heart, 

stiffens the lithe little 

shadow of your soul,

I have caught you 

acting bold

now and again on our

walks around town—

as if you cannot 

help but follow 

the lead of your 

misbehaving nose;

as if bravery,

for you, were less a compulsion

than an instinct—

a default rather than a goal. 

As if, though 

many bright and strongly-scented

leaves adorn the ground, 

you somehow prefer 

to gaze into trees—

to lift your snout 

and search up, and over, and out 

instead of down.