The Non-Narrative Fraction

We may all be
fictions, we may
be all fictions,

but we could
try for other than
the truth after

all, we could
try to stop
trying to be

our own stories,
we could lie
around, lying

about telling
tall stories at
all, we could

reinvent new non-
narrative fictions
whose truth is

this fire in
the fake motel
grate, the snow

on these silken
spring flowers
that can't fade.

Hush, Hush, Wait

Just when we know
something important
just has to happen,

just at the date
that looms importantly,
the great big anniversary

of the last seismic
shift in our landscape
of ordinary living

the sly world goes grey
and quiet, almost
ashen, and whispers

to us, "Not this,
not this time, not
now. Hush, hush, wait. . . ."

Assessing the Improbable Ubiquity of Belief

Explore
the world
sideways

encompass
what you may
neither push nor grasp

try if try
you must
not to understand

The Cricket

We have a cricket
in the house who
chirps day and night.

He has migrated
from under the bed
to under the stove,

to under the bookshelves,
to under the old stereo
system over four days,

and we know this
because he signals,
and we wonder

in the human way,
how he got in,
does he eat our spiders,

and most of all
is he lonely,
does he have a chance

to find a mate,
lost in our world,
will he live?

Our compulsion
to wonder about
parts of a world

with no apparent
need to wonder
for themselves

is as us, as
inexplicable, as
tuneful and monotonous

as the chirping
of our cricket,
day and night.

The Broken Sundial

Wind drives great clouds
across the sky, above the valley,

the long, deep solemn valley,
exactly the length and width

of Manhattan Island, but
specializing in emptiness,

as its inverse, the bustling
city island, specializes in plenitude.

We are perched on the Rim
of this template of spaciousness

now, where more mule deer live
than humans, more ghosts

haunt the ruined archaeology
than bodies inhabit the houses,

most of which are second homes
of absentee owners, bare

and almost silent, some grand,
some humble, some bizarre,

where we know ourselves guests
of this house, this land, these clouds,

these native deer, tenants only
among the myriad missing owners,

the ancient and contemporary
people scattered over time and space

like these reappearing, racing,
disappearing clouds themselves,

that rise from the western red cliffs,
tower, tumble, and sink into mists

on the snowy La Sals
heaped up to the east,

the peaky catchers of clouds,
giant hampers of white nothings

whose constant transformation
changes everything without

changing nothing, the absence
that is its own presence, the feeling

of an emptiness more
substantial than everything.

In our rented, also mostly
empty house, an old clock ticks

high on the wall, too high
above our reach to correct,

sounding just like time, except
the hands have never moved.

Still at Any Speed

Remember now,
not to save, but
to savor, Sequoia

sleeping on the sofa,
the chipmunk and the jay
stuffing themselves

on the flagstones
in the sun, the wind
tossing the rabbitbrush,

stirring the tenacious
pinyon pines and junipers,
the enormity of this.

Keep remembering
and returning
to whatever is

happening, as it
happens. It's always
happening, and all

you are, will ever
be, is knowing
the enormity of this.

In Like a Lamb

Who are the dead?
a girl asked
in a dream,

a girl who
was herself nothing
but part of that dream,

a ghost, whether
of the spirit
or of the synapses.

We are the dead,
the poem answered
out of the dream,

We are the dead,
and that is the best,
most beautiful thing.