IMPROMPTU

If you have ever
walked south
by southeast down
a diagonal avenue

and come to a sudden
ramshackle clearing
in the freezing brightness
of a 10 a.m. January

and seen—above the few bare
sycamores there, the triangular
rim of bedraggled building cornices,
and the boarded-up fountain lying
dormant in the center—

dazzling dozens
of undulating pigeons, all
graywhite and frenzied
and swooping in clusters,

all flecked iridescent
with the high-angled light
and perfectly synchronized
in their ad hoc pantomime;

then you might
have understood
for a fraction of a second

at once, both
the thrill
that must lie beyond a word
like spontaneity 

and the rarity
(bordering on magical)—
anywhere on earth,

let alone the universe—
of such a thing as
a single
unified gesture.

STING

Slowly and carefully
year by year,

I have set up
the perfect perimeter—

refined the edges,
groomed the green deputies,

built and maintained all the 

special equipment:

mirror shades, Thermoses, 

caution tape, toothpicks.

Any minute,
I'll catch the man

I'm afraid of

becoming

(a look-alike, they tell me,
fiendishly clever)

and cuff him 

for talking funny, acting a bit off,

or getting the least little anything 

wrong.

JUMP THE SHARK

So here we are—
our post popular series
of big-
budget nightmares

has been greenlit
for another season.
Which is good
since I'm still trapped here

under that avalanche
of my own first
draft pages
of the narrative—

hogtied and lips blue,
praying
to be rescued
by you, same as ever—only,

this year,
in order to bolster ratings
and dash
all expectations,

I'm guessing—
in a much more spectacular,
reckless, and
improbable fashion.

IN THE DETAILS

It seems no matter

what the situation—

waiting rooms, dinners out, 

hikes through the forest—

there's always
the most punctilious
devil on my shoulder;

life-and-death talons 

clenching sensitive skin,

bright red wingtips, 

bidding: Change you direction 

again! Let's go faster!

or tweeting
out to his legion
of followers 

(as if I no longer counted
myself among them):

Is it over yet? so help me, 

god—

this is boring.

SAME BOAT

O the simple rules
obeyed by ocean waves.

O the difficulties
complexity faces

trying in vain
to mimic those movements—

the smooth morning rolls
and the afternoon sighing;

the silent fortitude
ordained by the moonlight

and the painless breaking
away overnight

of form 

from its inevitable function.

So this then is the crest
and the pinnacle:

the refusal of flow
to relinquish its own edges,

to register the pressure,
the largess of all of the others

who have broken, 

long before this—

our fathomless, vast 

unwillingness to depend.

A POET

is hardly an author 

the way a maker 

of forests is— 

 

a black squirrel, spitting acorns, 

a brown finch,

shedding seeds. 

 

Then again, in a nutshell:

it's a relative cinch, 

 

to grow something complex 

as an oak tree 

 

from a blueprint 

or sketch— 

 

but it's hell 

collapsing it back 

to the acorn again. 

HERE'S WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING

Perhaps
it actually
isn't that abstract—

you look out
and see your own
ignorance

rippling
through anyplace
you don't exist.

The edges
between you
and it

glint—so sharp
and sheer
they could cut anything

living
logical
or symbolic

to shreds
so subtle as to be
impossible

to grasp at all
meaningfully as—back
from the dead.