UNCONTRIVED

          Lord, make me an instrument 

          of your peace: where there is 

          hated, let me sow love.

               —Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi


I'd settle for less

than to be made into 

an instrument,

a vessel 

in training, or even 

a cane rejected.

Premium substance

is much too 

contentious; make me

cruder 

than a weapon—

genuine as plain wood.

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It's true that there’s meaning 

in effort, I guess—

but I wonder

 
if there’s just as much
in our efforts
to erase?

 
For it sure seems to take
a revolutionary act—
not to mention

 
all the strength
of Hercules at his labors—
to push back 

day after day
against the incessant wind 

of competition;

to hit backspace
on the runaway 

sentence of our chatter

and slim down each
column inch of schadenfreude 

and envy;

to rake, before we 

turn out the light, the ripples 

of history and obligation

from the ocean
of sand that we keep
on our nightstand

in a glass box

to remind us of the only 

work that matters.

THIS IS HOW YOU PRACTICE ETERNITY

Your campaigns
need not be large
or clever. 

Performed at the right time,

no advancement
leads to skirmish,

for every movement is 

recurrence; 

every way is yielding.

wait your turn and 

every gesture

may become an artist’s flourish—

after which, you'll
just forget it. Thus, it lasts
forever.

UNCARVED BLOCK

How formidable 

the wholeness, 

the bigness of the still-

uncommitted; 

the nonessential, eyeless

and limbless—nonetheless 

holding all things

in potential.

NOTHING GAINED

          —for Bret & Joe

Back when we
were young
and taut, we thought
that less
was a kind
of loss. but now
that we’re old
and loose
and have slowed (if not
given up) our pursuit
of more, we find
we’re consoled
with the prize
of enough
and rewarded
by the sight of new
wrinkles in our
faces, since
we’ve finally come
to view these depressions
the way they were 

meant to be billed 

in the first place:

not as scars,
but basins—filled
not with loss,
but space.

 

TRY NOT TO TRY

No matter how elaborate,

or sensitive, or vast—

no nuclear quantum
logic clock can
give you back your past,

fly you to the future,

or even tell you 

when it’s now.

If you really want the gift

of this subtle, stubborn,

fugitive instant, 

you do not have to 

wrench it 

like the sword 

from its plinth 

of inscrutable stone; 

you only have to take 

and hold it—

but first, you must know 

that it comes 

with the prerequisite

that you listen 

and accept it 

for what it is—or 

was, anyhow.

NOT THE CONCEPT OF A MIRACLE BUT A MIRACLE ITSELF

Name its species;

call it 

gorgeous;

describe for us its color

and texture 

and smell.

None of this 

captures 

the wordless desperation

of a few scrawny 

leaves and petals—clawing 

for the sun.

 

IMMACULATE CONSUMPTION

It’s easy to recognize

Christ on the cross—

refusing 

their speared sponge,

heart wide-open.

Harder to find 

god at the five-and-dime—

rifling through our miracle 

cures, quart-size 

lip gloss, government cheese; 

squeezing every 

oblate orange there—

looking

for a thicker skin.

PROOF

Before you start to whine 

about your isolation’s

lengths, remember:

absence is the medium

which allows love’s waves
to propagate.

Like a rebar,
it adds strength—and thereby,
even estrangement entwines.

In this rigorous art,
Descartes himself was 

quite insistent:

no matter
how distant-
ly far apart,

two separate points
make one un-
broken line.

THE ANTIDOTE

Why is there no Ex-Lax 

for the constipated heart? 

No ipecac syrup after 

love’s poison dart?

Sometimes, we've been told,
you need that pump to heave

before the gunk of old
relationships will truly up-and-leave.

It’s either that, or drive up 

at a fast clip and fling

the poor diseased thing 

through the window of a flower shop—

or better still, make it scream
and march until it drops

from the ledge around the top 

of the Hallmark Channel building.

DEVOTIONAL

After meager 

supper and the dousing

of fire: 

the somnolent buzz

of katydids and crickets

chanting their drowsy
vespers from the thickets 

in the evening’s dying embers—

as if to sing 

this doleful meridian

and its citizens, still 

hampered by their 

misbegotten promises  

and heavily 

laden with drips 

of condensation 

from the leaky 

spigot of unfinished business,

more surely tonight
and swifter than ever 

to dreamless
undramatic slumber.

SHADOWBOX

Blue bachelor's 

buttons, it's your 

last chance: I 

will trade you—

you 

may seek exotic 

pleasures, riches, 

and romance;

and I will find 

the treasure 

here in doing 

what I do.

DAILY STEPS

Week 

after week,
the circular path

cut by my
bare feet through
the tall grass,

though narrow
as it needs 

to be, grows deeper 

with largess.

This peculiar 

marriage

of weedy strangeness

to certainty

looks uncouth 

from the macadam 

footpath 

of expedience—

and is death 

to Morning

Pages of course—

but it works
like a champ 

when you’re 

obsessed 

(if not cursed) 

with repetition

and the search for, 

not the best 

solution, but 

the most particular 

and accessible 

plan: never guess

or catch as 

catch can, but

do not just try

harder, either—

try harder to 

resist less.

OBLIGATORY ODE

Praise poems, rhymed 

sonnets, lusty 

paeans filled with flowers—

come midsummer, prime
detritus like this just

proliferates

like clover. But break

out the backhoe;

mow it all down; 

rip it up 

by the roots in 

a huff, if you must—

any move 

as such becomes part

of the dumbshow.

Even your most 

heartless, narrowed 

burn on lazy bees and finches

is the glaze crack 

that clinches an authentic 

grecian urn; it's 

the left eye 

of a blackbird—one of many

raindrops gathered

 
on a red and rusty
barrow—the last line 

before the turn.

CATECHISM

What is death?—

     Not an opportunist,

     but a highly skilled

     and scientifically

     literate terrorist.

     Luckily, life is not
     a nuclear submarine—

     that is,

     it didn’t come

     with any blueprints.

What then, is life?—

     A game
     whose number one rule is

     if you think it’s a game, 

     then in this moment, 

     you’re losing. 

Losing? 

     Catching moments 

     like fish 

     in a translucent lake

     even though you know you'll have 

     to throw them back before you go. 

And this moment?—

     The ongoing affliction
     of not being able to decide

     if you’d rather have
     yesterday back
     or tomorrow.

Yesterday I've heard of, but 

what the hell's tomorrow?—

     Blameless sweet white
     frosting on a birthday cake.

     Each year, under 

     greater threat 

     of caramelization into sorrow

     from the innocuous addition
     of one more slight flame. 

And sorrow? 

     Any time during 

     when you suspect

     there might be an ending 

     to this game.

IMPERFECT OFFERING

          The better the singer’s voice, 

          the harder it is to believe 

          what they’re saying.

               -David Byrne, Stop Making Sense  

Manna is prone 

to mealworms 

or mold; iridescence 

heralds both 

fever and death. 

As any city 

pigeon knows:

freedom’s wings 

may come 

stapled to rats—and 

Eden’s fruit is filled 

with pith—still, 

gutters grant quick

baptismal baths, 

and you do not need 

to sing the beautiful

for the sound you 

make to be the truth.

YOU COULD BE MISTAKEN

Jonah too at first
thought he was large.

Or perhaps it was
the opposite: too slight
to get swallowed.

Is there such a thing
as an ordinary vision?

You have heard hatred’s 

trochees marching 

lockstep in your sleep

and seen the herringbone 

marks of large 

teeth on your arm

with no idea how 

they got there. Maybe 

right versus wrong 

is charade. Maybe it's simpler: 

if you parade around acting 

well-fed and not limping,

you too will be followed. 

Or maybe you were made
to stay in one place and shine

like the sun—the only thing 

in this preposterous universe

too plain to need a name.

WALKING AFTER JESUS

Crush a rose

with your heel

if you want. Still 

it will bless

your foot

with its scent.

WHY I STILL WRITE

A lighthouse doesn’t 

cry out

or run 

all around 

the island's coast;

it just keeps 

repeating the one 

thing it does

and hopefully 

helps a few boats.

LAWS OF INERTIA

Never mind romantic notions

of agape and eros;

there are two kinds of love 

we the stricken know of:

the one we’re so stuffed with

it billows from our pores like magic—

at night we can barely 

shut our eyes

and each caress and kiss
feels tantric—and of course

the next-morning kind

which we walk around so light on

that every time we take
a step, it’s like 

we glide 

into oncoming traffic.

ORDINARY DREAM

Dreamt I built myself a temple 

from what I could steal 

from the ruins of old temples—

and the only
change I made
to the pile

was to hose
the rubble down
for a while,

just to get some of the holy off

and make it a little
more run-of-the-mill.

ON THE SEVENTH DAY, GOD RESTED

And lo, only after growing tired 

of carrying out the legislation 

of his own delight did he discover

that the greatest pleasure in creation
is solitude and isolation. O, to put 

down the phone, he thought. 

O, to be left alone 

to be a recluse. And now, 

having been made in his image, 

so it must go with all of us. 

For is not the point of our lives 

a sharp end 

when our loneliness no longer 

makes us feel small—and, turns out, 

never did at all?

 
All along, in fact, it brought us 

closer to omnipotence. 

Like the sunflower

teaching the galaxy how to swirl, it 

made us feel simply enormous 

with excuses.

HEATSTROKE BEBOP

Great chariot of Apollo’s fire,

please speed

up your layover. Is there 

more time

than there used to be before—

or is it 

only passing slower?

Rooftop of June 

and height of afternoon as 

languid and narcotic 

clouds drift by like belly-up fish

and baked bees labor 

in the clover drunk on nectar's straight 

concentrate of summer.

Red rover red rover, I already 

have a hangover, so

let’s just hurry up and get this 

apotheosis over.