VICISSITUDES

Last leaf on the maple, 

I’d almost forgotten

after last season's
lightness, but I know

how you feel: both

bright gold

and crippled—

doomed 

but finally seen—

and always

for defensible but 

not the right reasons.

BONFIRE NIGHT

By November, when its colder
and sound travels 

farther, I can hear 

the swift but distant tolling

of church bells—right on the tick
of the hour. And,
for a sepulchral moment,
I can’t remember

which unfulfilled promise
I’m still holding out for:
a calmly determined
clockwork universe—or

swarms of crotchless
six-winged seraphim
praising god’s capricious love
of wrongness to the rafters.

AUTUMN LANDSCAPE WITH SOLITARY SOCIALIST REALIST

Post-harvest

orchards—what pure

formalism! Gorgeous 

works of art

that no longer 

serve a purpose.

PRETTY BIG LEAP

The trick is 

to run

and jump off the cliff—

not at the end
of careful deliberation—
but to start with.

It’s cold air’s bracing lack
of any guarantees 

mixed with the bright light

of improvised deeds 

which grows wings—

while they’re stunted
and suppressed by pre-
determination’s flop sweat
and the perpetual shade
of the well-
played victim.

And let's not 

forget: even when you’re
airborne, any 

post hoc rationale

or vindication
clips them.

HOW TO CONDUCT YOURSELF

Don't ponder. Often,

there is one way

to get through a thing.

Even
the electrons—ficklest 

changelings in creation,

born of (and

ever since, borne

along hither 

by) energy’s most ecstatic 

and spontaneous 

eruption—

will retire their 

erratic ping- 

ponging and laughter

to flow 

in soundless single file

down the insulated wire.

ONE IN A BILLION

     —after W.S. Merwin


On the last day of the world,

I would not want to know it.

Because maybe not realizing
how lucky you've been

is what burnishes one stupid 

little pebble on the beach—that is: 

only walking over your life 

day after day without bending down

to put it in your pocket
allows you to own it.

CONTINGENCIES

Ridiculous
how practical a surfeit 

of color is—

how fall’s glamour 

will strategically go

tripping on its own largess—

how a blanket

of gold leaves super-

sedes its inconvenience

and tends to do much 

more than beguile 

or interrupt us; 

it also 

just so happens

to shrewdly obstruct

our view of a future

wherein 

frivolous gluts

might no longer 

clog our minds’

gutters, trapping memory

and insulating

whatever loud

homunculi reside there

from the functional

knowledge and

intractable glory

of their own 

untimely deaths.