But from the Tree of Life, Thou Shalt Eat and Eat and Eat

Is what we want 
What we desire?
I don't think so.

What we desire
Is not for us
But for making

More Life from Life
At the expense
Of each small life,

While what we want
Is peace of mind,
Our little peace,

Tranquility
No matter what
Desire demands.

Supposedly, Jack Kerouac

Once opined that "happiness
Consists in realizing
That it's all a great strange dream."
At least, that's what the greeting

Card I've carted around for years
Proclaims. What dreaming made me
Think that was a profound statement, I wonder, 
Coming as it did from so unhappy Jack?

Or am I being unfair to my younger self,
To him, to ask that? The realization
Could have been certifiably true,
The happiness unsustainable.

Labor Day

Now that's what you do
With a hot afternoon
Back home in nowhere

Eat local fruit
Drink local beer
Dance in the sprinklers

Screw the unpacking
Scratch the parade 
Doze as you please in the shade 

The Odd Letter to an Old Friend

Sarah sometimes marvels

At the weirdness of male friendships.

"You go without talking

For years and then start up again,



Like you've never lost touch,

With no apologies, hardly,

Just the briefest catch-up,

Like nothing has to be discussed."



It's not quite that simple.

No longterm friendship's effortless.

Even old frat-boy pals

And comrades-in-arms can bicker



Anxiously as any

Insecure middle-school girlfriends

(And countless, complaining

Presidential memoirs prove this).



For myself, I sometimes 

Wondered whether my good friend James

Had perished in those years

He was around one side of the world,



I around the other,

Old traveling companions lost,

Thanks to more traveling.

Men are sentimental that way.



Then we're in touch again,

Quickly recapping our updates,

Professions, illnesses,

People and places gained and lost,



And back to the real news,

What are you reading and writing?

What do you think of this?

Do you still maintain that theory?



This, that, and not so much.

As little as I can these days.

The President? So-so.

The theory? Dead in the water,



Even if mostly true. 

The news? All traffic accidents,

Difficult to avoid,

Sickening to look at closely.



Yeh, man, I did that too;

Gave my televisions away

Years ago, even though

I still can't kick the Internet.



Our ordinary thoughts

On our extraordinary lives

(Now there's a talking point!

Are all lives extraordinary,



Given that no one can

Escape one's singular viewpoint,

Which must, therefore, be rare,

Of necessity?), here and gone.

Endless Abacus

My daughter has a toy with beads

That zoom along a spiral wire,

An M.C. Escher abacus

That allows for no accounting.



I watch her push the beads around.

I push the beads around myself,

Convinced I'm entertaining her

But really entertaining me.



The beads that go around come back,

But never in the same sequence,

And no one cluster can be forced

To go all the way together.



A stupid trope occurs to me

One bleary-eyed dawn play session,

That this is the true wheel of fate,

Contorted, asymmetrical,



Arriving at no summation,

But as with energy and mass

Constantly coming up the same,

Defying the dichotomy



Of argumentative humans

Who seem to prefer to believe

In the gods of Would, Could, and Should,

Or the God of It-Is-Written.



Here twirls the law of nothing lost,

Nothing to be gained: decisions

Can only move things along,

As good either way, right or wrong.

P.S. 49

Sweetness seizes and surprises me

With a grip as vise-like and sudden

As any sorrow: the sight

At twilight of Sarah laughing, running 



Toward me, our baby Sequoia over one slender shoulder,

Baby giggling madly, fat arms out flopping,

Like some chubby cartoon airplane,

Flying down a canyon road, 



A  vision brief but overwhelming,

That this is my life, a simple birthday celebration

In dragon mountains' dark blue air

Where my wife and daughter play.

Evolution of Souls

The recipe for our success

As homo sapiens contained

Countless toxins to contentment

As self-referential beings:



Elaborate theories of minds,

Storytelling, anxiety,

Conviction, cooperation,

Imagination, and regret.



All of the social games we play

(And all of our games are social,

Including those games in our heads)

Are intricate conspiracies



By life against its instances,

Convincing us to carry on,

Creating ghosts from the pure urge

To keep on living forever,



And it all ends up trapped inside 

We flickering nothings, we souls,

Who now serve as our own cages

For prisoners we can't control.