ALL THE TIME

Everything 

about each moment 

you could even 

notice:

tough to list without 

forever—

isn't that 

enough? 

DESPERATE MEASURES

Felt like, for 

a while there, every day, 

we could rely 

on such cheap 

and plentiful 

wooden reminders: 

one plus one 

is equal to two; 

fair and fowl 

always cancel 

each other. But 

when the desperate 

times hit, the first 

orders we got were 

to ratchet-up 

the abstract, 

restrict access 

to the rational.

Overnight, belts 

grew tighter, skins 

thinner, blood redder; 

while, outside 

in the cold, all the poor 

devils' kids 

had only dry sticks 

to learn basic 

addition with. 

And to make 

matters worse: 

stick-plus-stick 

wasn't always 

two sticks; 

for one or two 

minds, starved and 

crammed into a corner,

stick-plus-stick 

equalled fire. 

GOAL SETTING

How can you ever hope 

to get clear 

on what you want

when even the birds 

in the yard

outside your window 

don't seem to know 

what they're after? 

Though their songs 

sound sincere, 

they're naive 

enough to ask for 

more and more worms 

on the lawn 

from a rainstorm 

under neverending 

skies full of bright 

sunny weather.

DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND MY CONTROL

After some years 

disavowing my failures,

I have come to believe 

there is beauty 

in futility— 

mostly because 

it makes the rough going 

easier. 

If I fail to describe 

the formal 

pleasure of a flower, 

or the zest 

of arcing birds, 

or the secret 

things I've heard 

the treetops whispering

as the feeble end of summer 

fell asleep 

on autumn's shoulder, 

is truth 

not reaped from the lack 

of result?

If I should take on 

the responsibilities of god

and find each moment 

swamped with all 

the labors I most hate,

have I not found 

my own heaven 

in passivity?

At last, won't I 

love the patchy 

worlds I create?

FIRST SHIVER

All across most 

of the northern hemisphere, 

dead leaves 

start to fall near the end 

of September, 

exerting, as they land 

on the cooling 

earth around here, 

a certain quiet, 

even pressure, 

a distinct but insinuated 

coercion 

of that solitude—

of that placid desolation 

and patient 

loneliness ahead—

that no man or woman 

who walks out 

amid the scene 

can realize—

or realistically 

could ever hope 

to bear to—  

how exquisitely 

but tenuously 

all the rest 

just felt it too. 

THE SLIGHTNESS

For most of your life, 

you think you're hip 

to what you're listening to—

then, one day, 

it isn't 

the music, 

but the silence 

that falls at the end 

of it all 

which inflicts on you

the goosebumps of something 

to confront: 

that absence 

which feels so 

audaciously exposed 

but which has, 

in fact, been adroitly 

composed by 

the full blast 

of all that has 

not come to pass—

by the slightness

of every last 

moment in your life 

when you didn't know 

what you could do 

or say next

playing back at 

full volume,

all at once.

AVAILABILITY BIAS

Ever notice—

the implications 

of certain things persist,

while the purport 

of others is considerably 

diminished?

With each new 

dead-ringer for Earth 

they discover, 

public interest 

in "the scientific" 

grows less 

and less certain; 

or you can't forget 

the favorite actor 

of the juvenile bastard  

who last 

broke your heart,

but you couldn't name 

the eye color 

of the woman who 

named you and 

fed you for years.

But of course, this is 

just the only way 

for significance 

to persist, and yet still 

remain endurable:

if you do not 

support it, it just 

disappears.