Amnesty

The sense that you are
the awareness
of awareness
is the only pardon,
simple amness.

There are no true
confessions, no
true stories, ever.
All narrative is innately
inficted. Forgive

the transforming,
constant movement
of matter, forgive

the constant want,
the yearning, forgive

the frustration
of owned, enculturated mind,
of endless mental
modeling, noodling,
forgive

the addiction to fiction,
the fantasy of willing
the world other, forgive

and be aware of
being aware of being,
amnesty.

Exhaustion

Yesterday was weird.
There are those days
when surrendering

is both the only
sensible option
and itself exhausting.

The particulars--
having to do
with corroded plumbing,

senseless bureaucracy,
alarming financial threats,
and so forth,

each issue unrelated
to every other, except
perhaps in the realm

of the gods and little
fishes who control us--
don't really matter.

But the insomnia
that resulted,
that matters,

that matters in every
muscle and mental
effort made today,

and the only recompense
the staggering brain
can remember

is a bleary-eyed view
across the blankets
of mother and child

head to head
in dreamy profiles
in pale grey morning light.

The Weirdness of Today

Perhaps the veil
is thinning, Sarah
said. We can only

hope so when
everything goes
wonky at once.

What malicious
fairy or office
worker needs

acknowledgement
and burnt offerings
for the weirdness of today?

The Truth about the Poem

Who wants to peruse
a text without a story?
Not even the forensic
philologist who disinters
the revenants of words
can resist gently padding
stories around the bare bones.

And that's what you get
once you've cleared away
the cobwebs of the busy
story weavers: the bare bones
of the poem, of the yearning
and its ending, nothing else.
And yet, and yet, sorrow

such as it is, will insist,
will seep in and stain
the cleanest remains,
stories or story or none.
Is there anything then
to be written or said,
leaving bare bones alone?

Nota Bene

Some days, (some,
there's that smoothest,
blandest, easiest
of all words to compose
with, some), some days
are mere placeholders
for all the real days, sharp

and broken and particular
that crop up later, like teeth
erupting, like frost-heaved stones
from the muck and loam
of boggy fields of memory:
those few days, the clear
hard, sharp, special,

eventful, episodic
datable days to remember.
Nonetheless, I'm reminded,
on some of these some days,
that most days are some days
and need to be loved,
even if only some.

Roan Horses in Soft Rocks

There are places
I pass by
on long hauls

where I never stop
but still feel a kinship
almost, a familiarity,

and for which I invent
my own names
such as "Soft Rocks"

for a spot in the bend
of Highway 6 descending
from Soldier Summit

where the rubble
of boulders encroaches
from the shoulder

onto the pavement
and the cliffs are full
of sagging cave mouths

the canyon toothy
with tottering piles
of eroding columns

the whole landscape
melting in transformation,
sweet naked geology, soft

half-compacted soil
raised into short-lived
mountains of crumbling

curves, and sometimes
a little magic to be glimpsed
up the narrow defile

in passing, streamers
of flood waterfalls, festoons
of carnivalesque winter ice

or, as today,
two exquisite roan
horses, wandering

free of reins or saddles
or any visible humans,
under one golden eagle,

and then I'm
past and I'm
gone and they're

gone and
the rocks
melt on.

The Transformation, the Yearning, and the Awareness

These three remain,

being, living, knowing

the ongoing of everything
the innumerable localized hungers
the finite flecks of infinite stillness

the motion that is everywhere
the motivation within motion that is rare
the notion that motion is endless and motivations must end

the continual changing from and into
the restless hankering for
the observation of

what is, always coming and going at once
what is not, always wanted and never here
what is nothing but is, never not already both here and gone

matter, life, spirit,
things, flesh, soul,
the transformation, the yearning, the awareness

take away the story
and only the poetry remains