Ancient Camels in the Arctic

This train wreck of a railroad town
Where the narrow, false-front PO
Still fronts a row of mailboxes
And a handful of single-wides
In the desert looks deserted,
But it may not be entirely,
Since it's not entirely quiet,
And since an empty whiskey jug
Sits in the middle of Main Street
With a painter's face mask attached
As some weird huffing contraption.
Someone is still trying to die here.
Someone still comes to get the mail.

Down the torn-up road, the river
Wanders past gravel pits, Fish Ford,
And various barbed-wire cow paths.
Tie-dyed rock formations erode
Random bits of dinosaur bone.
You want to know this why? Because
As the Arctic was dense forest
Once, and this once was wet jungle,
As the railroad once cut edges
Through percentage-grade barrenness
To re-people stones with cow towns,
So too, whatever's ever left
Will be left bereft of context,
Including these, including this.

Worm Moon Fragments

A pretty good Friday in Moab,
What with the sun shining on the Jeeps,
And one who is none can find oneself

Wondering how the ordinary
Can emanate from untouchable
Underpinnings, gravitational

Tugs weaving through tragic and magic,
How humans on holiday emerge
From our ritual observances

Of the mysteriously unkind
Acts we have done to one another,
To men we admired as gods, to gods

We admired for what they'd done to us.
A kind of water, blued purple thread,
Rushes on under us as we float,

Drawing sustenance from mysteries,
From every curse and blessing coursing
Downriver from the turn of the moon.

Raven, Pronghorn, Lizard, Ground Squirrel, Deer

And so forth. Everyone's trying
To cross the road and aspiring
To some immortality rare
And strange. Even the rocks are scared

From their nooks and crannies by spring.
Every trembling thing is tumbling

Down out of their quiet, winter lairs,

Except flies rising in the air

To screw and argue. Encircling
Our bed with their constant whirring
Through sunlit gaps, up holy stairs,
They buzz hosannas. I don't care.

Between Meadowlarks

Clever little knot,
All shape and no rope,
Quietly waiting
Silence I live for,
Not really silent

But uncannily
Close to the vortex
Of actual change
While barely humming--
There it is. At last.

Ah. Eleleleu.
Eleleu. Alas.
Eleison.  Yes,
Mercy. Have mercy.
Sorrow and rejoice.

Another spring comes
To cattle and grass,
Fence posts, cottonwoods,
Rushes and ponds--
Honor and mercy,

Herald and angel
Of lengthening days,
Warmer, windier
Weather and the heat
To come in its turn,

Soon enough, but not
Yet. Later. Today,
Winter's denouement,
Unfolding as long
Whistling, nests and wings.

He Lets It Go As It Will

Bare shade trees lined the edges
Of dead orchards. The sedges
Lined the lake. Migrating birds

Spoke to me in my own words,
But sweetly, even the geese.
Out of the sore body, peace

And surprising ease replaced
Maudlin discomforts. I traced
The gaps, the wonderful voids

Between a note and a voice,
The grace and the resonance
Of the gray and dissonant,

Mysterious roadside air,
And I forgot to despair.
Give roads their roar and whining.

Time for every singing thing,
For whatever comes along,
To make music for its song.

Linear A

What Homer couldn't know was this:
For years before Odysseus
Left home, Penelope, and joy
For the long horror that was Troy
And the hallucinatory,
Waterlogged witch worlds of story,
He wrote notes.
                                  He knew the secret
Of the script already dying
Before words burnt and all writing
Stopped.
                   He scratched out his life in lines
Of dead language, a double code,
Too subtle for suitors to know,
That a seer couldn't chant aloud.

 

Before his wife began his shroud,
Before the waiting game commenced,
He inscribed loss in present tense.

For himself, his child, and his wife,
He curved the surface of his life,
Shadow and light, insight wrestling
With foolery, fear, everything
He thought to observe while he could,
Before Ithaka's cliffs and woods
Sank in the turning of the sea
To the west as the wind turned east.

Who knows if his notes told the truth?
Reading the lines to trace his routes
Can't decipher his intentions.

Time is the only dimension
Anyone's ever traveled in;
His lines are time unravelling.

Whether near to or far from shore,
Because of monsters, gods, or storms,
Or because sailors misbehaved,
All his ships sank in the same waves
And only appeared to scatter.

Sifting place names hardly matters.
It's lost script. It's finished. It sleeps.
It's the fish rising from the deep.

The Archaeology of Ants

"In a dry year...The restless and the hungry follow the seasons."

We don't really know
What we think or feel.
Therefore, let's be pleased
With ourselves, content
With that which finds us.

Let's read happiness
As given, not built
Crumb by crumb, or snatched,
Antennae flailing,
From life on the run.

I like being calm.
I like the bright sight
Of a tired morning,
Of any old moon,
Of my own eyes smiling

Back from a mirror
That could use cleaning
But works well enough
To tell me I am
A busy creature

Who has kept moving,
Somewhat randomly
Apparently, but
With purpose. I like
The sun on the cliff.