When Peg laughs like Liz
deep woman-hearted laugh
eating beef jerky on Mesa Verde

the good hearts and smarts of women
come back to me, not guessing
any better than they at the time what love

meant, leaving them behind in sandstone time
going to my own cement, sandstone
or good mountain grave

having seen the sharp-shinned and sparrow
hawk flying and at rest, not at peace,
seeking prey from a ponderosa snag.

I left my woman behind to float
alone down the long canyon for feathers
and signs, she's making camp

the moon half full, the sun half high
sky full of planets birds and stars
I look up from the rocks

elements
housekeeping, thinking
love that's learned to love

from earlier loves
laughs remembered, heard
in the laugh of the woman who is my wife.

I

These days I forgive myself everything. After all
I'm alone and unhappy so I give myself a little treat
whenever possible. On summer nights I remember
the good women who loved me but live with their husbands
      now.

This is not an easy life but I'm not afraid. Despair
leads me to talk too much about myself rather than
be transcendent. I trade push for shove with the world
and sitting above the river feel I could move the globe.

If I could stay out here on the roof all day,
get ****** and read the I Ching, write a few lines
and forget my troubles, I could be happy
today. Then I would go to work tomorrow.

But I rise at dawn and drink some orange juice.
It is good with ice. Buy a newspaper going to the train.


II

In this lousy life we work five days a week.
An Indian could gather a week's food in three days
and go swimming in the hot afternoon. The pleasure
civilization offers is a drive past fast food joints
on Merrick Avenue to a sea food restaurant in Freeport.

Almost everyone I know is dissatisfied with life
as we have been pressed into it. The system gives us
cancer and heart attacks and repressed sexuality when
I was born to be sensuous and enjoy another's body.
Instead I slug the world and the world slugs back.

I have five minutes to finish this poem. I remember
the smooth women I have known, remaining in bed
all morning. Our big ambitions are our curse.
We uphold our end of the society.


III

While it's true that I'm not happy, I'm very amused
at the craziness I have let myself in for.
Hopefully it's only one year of sleeping in my clothes
without a woman and drinking plenty of wine after work.

I listen to someone start a car downstairs, but that
is not my world, nor do I know any of these eight million
I live beside in the crotch of many waters. Above
Broadway Saturday, the geese fly south for winter.

This morning, in twenty minutes, I will go downstairs wearing
a shirt and tie and jacket and carrying a briefcase.
I will tear myself from the pleasures of tea and breakfast
to arrive at the office where each day my happiness is
      challenged.

I accepted humanity as a natural part of nature. When
I did that I had to pay the rent and get a job, too.


IV

A famous samurai crosses a plain in winter
looking for work. He comes to a farm community
but the farmers have no use for his skills. So
he removes his swordbelt and sets to work digging.

It is temporary employment while the seasons change.
The sky is gray and all of the women are occupied
warming their homes. None look up from their work
except to glance at the strong samurai digging.

Why is he digging in the frozen ground? The poet
knows little about farming and less about fighting.
He has put the samurai to work at a pointless task.
It is too early in the year to begin digging.

Nobody pities the pointless samurai or gives him food.
He ties on his sword and starts chopping wood.


V

These bird songs, this January morning, I look
for a way out of life. The Texas woman tells Marc
stories about the football players she's ******.

Although I complain like a blue jay about it, life
has accepted me. Walking uptown with Stephanie it's clear
how much the Empire State Building I've become.

Nevertheless, we make our own decisions. To fight war
or not. They are all my friends, I work for their success,
but choose my poison independently. For me, laziness
and anonymity when I could have been a star.

Newspapers indicate there is much to discuss besides myself
but the Muse seems to disagree. My few friends and the age
will look quaint as a daguerreotype in the light
of the holocaust. I kiss the girl of my dreams.


VI

Again it is almost Spring. It gives me only pain
to think back on past Springs when I seem to have been
someone else. The people who lived then live today
in the same bodies but changed in every other way.

Of course I must continue, with or without good humor.
What was amusing in my youth, that God's finger
could move me to another square, now makes me fear
old friends who are dead to me and yet still here.

The veil of life is thin if one doesn't believe in mystery.
Frequently it blows and reveals the thickening body,
alone, without a soul. One hopes for a consort who
through her own pain has become gentle and simple too.

If only I could share this life with a good wife.
But she would only be unhappy and bring me grief.

Out of emptiness comes this:
Purposes as incomprehensible and wonderful as these purposes
Either you had no purpose or the purpose is beyond the end

Because the timepiece not only serves a purpose, it is adapted to that
      purpose
Except it was a secret purpose
The world is a mental activity, a dream of souls, without foundation,
      purpose, weight or shape

People in collective idleness are even more repellent than when
      purpose motivates them
God, glass, my townspeople! For what purpose?
His purpose and mine is to catch photons and store them in our
      bones

Lately I have thought about our war and its purpose
To have a season for every purpose, Ecclesiastes was right about
      that
Languages of mammals, purposes of insects, placement of rocks

They purpose nothing but to multiply and die urgently beating east to
      sunrise and the sea
Having died, as such, I find I do not mind quiet living with the
      purpose of a cell
Stately purposes, valor in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet,
      death for the right cause

My friend who is counselor to kings and presidents doesn't lack purpose
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Not to say there is no purpose necessarily, just I don't immediately
      get it

The purpose of sitting is not to be satisfied or satiated
Use of violence by the local militia for a limited purpose, protect the
      young from the janjaweed, the crop from the ****
The knight, the penitent misses last assessment of life's purpose,
      babbling for God to appear

I mean your entire purpose should be living, you must take living
      seriously
Sleep with a purpose
Or lose all purpose beyond ******, child *** and food hoarding

Proof that there's a purpose set before the secret working mind
Having purposefully expunged from it every trace of emotion
What is relevant for our present purpose is counting is associated
      with primitive forms of writing

That is the purpose of poetry
The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world’s innumerable       wonders
Their corners sharp, their lines exact, as if their purpose was to show       the plane geometry of snow

That’s when everything becomes clear, purpose v. purposelessness       matters less
Lonely physics, national purpose
This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of eating less)!

Desperate for new fetuses to teach purposeful workmanlike killing, we       will live with the question What was our purpose?
If we are not at home in the world, contributing purpose, we lose our       desire to stay here—and we die
The men who left the machine have started their own business, a new       endeavor by which they will keep warm and purposeful

You go the way of an unknown soldier, unable to assess the purpose of       the battle
Let Greece then know my purpose I retain, nor vex with new treaties
      my peace in vain
And shake the purpose of my soul no more

Having not done the things I wanted to do
and the things I've done not being what I wanted to do
I sit here looking at lichen on the north side of trees.

Black-capped chickadees
cheerful and truthful expression
grouped in platoons, sharing the point.

The tribes travel together
first finches, then chickadees
following the squirrels every morning.

What luxury, abundance! Handful after handful
of grass seed thrown, into wind.
The corn ripe and the rye with it.

The other main families: pines, roses, peas,
lilies, daisies, heath, birch and oak.
Maple, honeysuckle, pink, mustard, cypress, mint, olive,
      buckwheat, primrose, willow, buttercup, saxifrage,
      snapdragon, cactus.

Truth may be ascertained by considering
the truth we feel, the truth we're told,
the truth we reason, and the truth we've seen.

It is so good to be a chickadee.
To tell the truth cheerfully and joyfully.
In a way that makes others want to live.

As air and leaf litter are substrate for the bird.
And what makes a human. Separation from the substrate.
Believing the substrate and the subject are separately defined.

Whatever gives the poem form - three lines - is the substrate.
Things will be said. The signer and the seer must supply the words
Which are the substrate of the mind. A beautiful week ahead.

No hundred year storms, normal summer warming.
Your bones are white as lightning and strong as sticks and stones.
At Pat's 80th b'day party most of us are old and jolly.

250,000 port-o-potties. There's a way to wash one out
And a way not to. Arctic ice melt. Slushies. One can count
Past one or nine by inserting zero to keep the rows.

Implied is an order beyond the small order we impose.
Goes to greatness human and divine. The two white wines
Death brings to the garden are the love between good friends -

Abstract. Suppose there is no afterlife, to understand the end
Imagine the beginning - no brain, no mind, no name, no I. Zero
Had already been inflated and the rose was in the garden.

Across the track, a rail yard worker
big innocent bear of a guy, beer
belly, embraces his girl. She’s
a conductor, comes up to that belly,
reaches arms not quite around
his back. They separate and embrace
three times while the train prepares
for departure.
                           Across the aisle,
a mother and son. Lights out, change engines,
they play Mercy. Squeeze fingers until one
cries mercy. The son still too small
to seriously challenge his young, athletic
mother. Ask and answer questions, laugh
and cry mercy, she draws and he colors
the features.
                         Unless a society
expects its fate to be better than its past,
it will strive to make its present
immutable as possible.
Optimism is a way of exploring failure.
It says there is no law of nature
or supernatural decree preventing progress.
Nearly all failures, and all successes, are in
our future.

Just watching raindrops slapping leaves
is better than anything requiring electricity
including fame and posterity. Monday
morning I walk over to the art museum
stand before Homer. I'm imagining
life in ancient Greece, the land largely
deforested to build a navy, white as bone,
a tourist attraction. The sea too being
denuded of its fish, super-efficient fishery
fleets, and every human wanting a healthy
dose of omega 3. O my God, omega!

the 24th and last letter of his alphabet,
which means great and has a value of 800,
often used to denote the last, the end, the
ultimate limit of a set, as in I am the alpha
and the omega (which was omitted
from the oldest manuscripts). In physics,
ohm is a unit of electrical resistance,
in chemistry, oxygen-18, a stable isotope,
in statistical mechanics, it represents multiplicity
(the number of microstates) in a system.
In astronomy, the density of the universe
(density parameter), the ranking of a star’s
brightness in a constellation, and the orbital
elements: the longitude of the ascending node
and the designation of the argument
of periapsis of an orbit.

Also the solid angle or rate of precession
in a gyroscope. In particle physics,
omega baryons. In complex analysis,
the Omega constant, a solution to Lambert's
W-function. In calculus, a variable
for a 2-dimensional region, usually
corresponding to the domain of a double
integral. In topos theory, the codomain
of the subobject classifier of an elementary
space. In combinatory logic,
the looping combinator. In group theory,
the omega and agemo subgroups of a p-group.
In Big O notation, the asymptotic behavior
of functions. Chaitin's uncomputable constant.

Omega watches, badge of the Supreme Court,
last mission of the Space Shuttle program,
God of War, Heroes of Olympus, Pokemon's
Omega Ruby, Sonic the Hedgehog's E-123.
Symbol of resistance to the Vietnam War draft.
Year of date of death. Lowest-ranked wolf.

In molecular biology, a two-point crossover.
The lower case omega denotes the carbon atom
furthest from the carboxyl group of a fatty acid.
One of the RNA polymerase subunits.
The dihedral angle associated with the peptide group.
A measure of evolution at the protein level.
In dynamics, angular velocity or angular frequency.
In computational fluid dynamics, the specific
turbulence dissipation rate. In meteorology,
the Lagrangian time rate of change of pressure
for a parcel of air. Natural frequency
in circuit analysis and signal processing.
The omega meson.
NULL, a missing or inappropriate value.

The first transfinite ordinal number.
The first uncountable ordinal number.
The complex cube roots of 1.
The Wright Omega function. A general differential form.
The number of distinct prime divisors of n.
An arithmetic function. The self-application combinator.

The elasticity of financial options.
The tracking error of an investment manager.
In linguistics, the phonological word.
The archetype of a manuscript tradition.
In eschatology, the symbol for the end of everything.

The beginning of my first week without tv.
No more movies. If I have nothing to do
or I'm too bored to do anything, I'll just sit still
see what happens. Be like weather.
Be under the weather, with the weather,
in weather. Watch weather from the window.
Wait for change, in me and the weather.
How will I change? This is life and not life.
In 15 years or so I'll be gone from the earth,
bones whitening on some mountain
or rotting in the lowlands river or estuary I lived near,
flesh to sweat flesh with the population, dead.

This death, consciousness of which should give
this life's activities perspective, except for the red
sunset which remains untouched by atomic IQ;
and dead, laying open to the blue sky and dry leaves
one autumn like last autumn, or the autumn
I realized my insignificance.

Have I ever been profoundly lost? Yes. Railroad tracks and a river wide as the Amazon, yet lost. Living in the intense sunshine of northern New York summer, but lost in the shade of a gazebo. And here? Here I am enclosed in a tomb of porcelain machinery. With another winter passing its calling card in at the window. The warm steam no longer cutting the rough edge. Wearing wool sweater nights. The freedom of summer gone and only one ****. What a nightmare, what a strange dream, life on planet, winter all around.

            A system, they call it a system. I call it an evolved anarchy. Repetition, never. What do I know. Repetition, every two thousand years. Coming of a frost, coming of a fire. When nature proves furious beyond remembrance. Polar bear mugs wino.

                               --------------------------------------

                         ­               *******

                            Tall, attractive, talented WM, 31,
                            trumpet player, takes pleasure in
                            performing ******* with clean
                            attractive women. Age, race, marital
                            status no object. All replies answered.

            Here is where it started, amusing myself in an undisciplined manner in the playpen. Being rude when interrupted. Height of bad taste hitting the wall, what's he talking about. Marlowe went to bed. He had a headache. Used an empty bottle for a teddy bear/sap. In the middle of the night, three secret men approached the rock he slept under. They did not see him there, the fire had long ago gone out. But they'd seen it across the valley, and tried to estimate. They were close.

            What do I care. They did this, he did that, they did this and this and that. He used his feet, took off his shoes. It mauled him to death in two minutes of the first round. Would have been better for him if it happened faster. Never got his knife out of his pocket. But he lived, with one eye after that.

                               --------------------------------------

                   What do you do with a drunken sailor early
                               in the morning?
                   You pull that sailor out of bed by his hairy
                               moorings.

            Why should anybody believe this, this tiresome outpouring of old moans and groans, grumbles about loneliness of life and dominance of telephone. This gamble on print, above the spoken, sung word. The meditative call to inhabitants of planet to kneel woefully and pray. No, to chant as if the planet were mending.

            Mending rhymes with ending, why not. And television, radio appreciated. Drugs and *****, jagged bent faces, black wet rock. The mantle of moss ripped away. Period. Amen to men. Absolute magical ripcord.

On one of the myriad bays
along the Maine coast. Keep the holocaust
at bay I said to Dave because
you’ll spend all day gathering
2,000 calories and still be miserable hungry.
An undiminished population of humans is risible.

Black spruce and balsam fir,
you can eat the inner bark
in a starvation emergency.
There’s plenty of Cornus—bunchberry—
each orange pith around the stone
worth maybe a quarter calorie.

Lots of sarsparilla but the fruits
not out yet and to date I have not
savored one. Let’s see—dandelion
of course and huckleberry but
the most important source of sustenance
would be seaweed.

Learn your mushrooms! for the protein.
Accept the situation
come the apocalypse.
I struggle against my insignificance
but it would be better to struggle
against my ignorance.

Less effortlessness, more fishermanliness.
That’s the lesson of this Maine vacation
there’s a lot you can eat when in need—
the hips of roses and the pips of grasses.
And an endless supply of seaweed—
bladderwrack, dulse, kelp and thin green lettuce.

If, as they say, the cells
of the body are replaced every seven
years, then I'm a new being
since my sons were newborn.
I have died and been reborn
neither better nor worse yet remembering
feeding them while dancing to Moment's
Notice, as they attended with new minds.

Having died, as such, I find I do not mind
quiet living with the purpose of a cell
unbound by minutes or moments
as men know them. There are seven
deadly sins, seven ways of remembering,
seven stages in which to have been or continue being.
None of them recur after one's reborn
and none are known to us from before we're born.

Of the two young people to whom I was born,
one has lately died. I do not so much mind.
Although I do not, he believed he'd be reborn
and who can say what happened to his soul or cells?
Perhaps in Christ we continue being,
or with some other deity, as the churches claim monotonously,
      momentously,
demonically and deviously. It seems about as relevant that
      seven
rhymes with heaven and rhyming's a mnemonic device (for
      remembering).

But remembering
what? To go to the daily discipline to which you were born?
I fought seven forest fires, took seven
lovers, my sons are seven, and my mind
is the sole owner and subsidiary of these memories and
      moments.
Unless I am to be reborn
they disappear with me. Masefield's poem continues to be
the most honest and chilling assessment of our souls' and cells'

disbursement. I can imagine stem cell
research may lead to a cure for dementia, loss of memory
about who you are and where you've been.
If one's not been born
this doesn't matter. But if you're being reborn,
in the sense of "he not busy being born is busy being reborn"
      (Dylan),
then it is best and most correct to consider your last moment
of a continuum with moments endless and entirely in your
      mind.

The mind is made of cells and moments, seven billion of them.
Remember to be born and reborn, early and often.

Spring. Same plants, same order.
Monday morning, open for business.
Tractor-trailers, day care centers.
Every leaf that’s coming out is out.

To tonight’s town meeting I will go unaware and foolish.
It’s delicious, the unimportance of my feelings.
Even our particular war was small.
Europe had one last a century.

Hubble photos of events 13 billion years ago
Do not put me in mind of the species’ insignificance.
Just the opposite having witnessed the universe’s birth.
But birth from what preceding state? God again rears his hoary head.

They say one must let go and will let go,
God will decide what tragedy you need.
Not every seed becomes a flower,
Not every branch breaks out like a prosthetic trombone.

While the ancient Romans wrote of love
The ancient Britons wrote of war.
The Romans should have been perfecting their republic.
No god could do that work for them.

The November moth's the fall cankerworm--Alsophilia pometaria--
Slender-bodied, beige, beginning life as the well known inchworm.
In our war more children may have died than would have had
      the tyrant lived in fear and awe.
We can never know because we conquered.

Should I become a middle school math or English teacher?
Leave my bed early in the morning and return with test papers to grade.
With what authority will I persuade those kids to sit still and perform
      calculations and interpretations.
I won’t be allowed to teach A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Nope, it’ll be
      Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies and Slaughterhouse Five. Novels
      that annoy.
Poems and math are magic. Words and numbers are things no one has
      ever seen or heard or touched.
But the administration keeps them separate. The curriculum’s
      determinate.
The kids are beautiful but combustible. When middle school lets out at
      the periapsis of Earth’s orbit, that’s the face of joy.

The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world’s innumerable
      wonders. The periodic table, World Wars I and II, Huckleberry Finn
      and Jim.
Once a gaggle of teenage girls bet whether I wore boxers or jockeys. I felt
      ambushed and unlucky. Also a bit afraid.
There’s little love lost between the students and the teachers. Expect to
      forget and be forgotten. Information.
I remember Mr. Killian my chemistry teacher. So boring about something
      I now find so interesting and important. He wasn’t boring; I was
      boring.
I remember Mr. Christensen my history teacher. He was fat and funny but
      taught as little as possible. I was known to laugh so hard I cried.
I remember Mr. T my calculus teacher. He dressed everyday exactly like
      Gene Kranz in mission control. I was confused past help so he didn’t
      help.
I remember Tone Kwas my music teacher. He said I was the worst
      trumpet player he’d ever tried to teach and switched me to
      sousaphone. He was right but so what! Playing badly is the best
      riposte.

Sometimes we like to do something for the story
we’ll tell afterwards. Buy a ’58 Pontiac, climb
a mountain in the dark. Lamar tells ***** jokes
with class, knows how to wait awhile, bend
a syllable and savor the laughter. We go on

with our absurd work, building a fence miles long
waste of steel and strong straight lodgepole pine
but even I don’t opine against it anymore. We’re
self-acknowledged children, fence is play and
livelihood also, but something cheerful as sunshine

for all the death it costs. There is so much life
a little death doesn’t matter. We stretch our muscles
the men feel like men, the women feel good too.
We stand around, watch a young rabbit one morning.

Sub-atomic particles
the atoms they form
molecules, cell organelles
cells, machinery of life
organs, organisms
communities and ecosystems
planets, solar systems, galaxies
galactic clusters and their inverse
black holes the doors to other
universes, a contradiction
in terms.
                 For language and its shadow
consciousness must hold matter
the material world snugly inside concepts
theories and hypotheses to be
experimentally verified using vision
and the other senses, collecting data
and interpreting the known facts
accumulated over time.
                                          Can matter
exist without a consciousness to behold it?

Believing in
our mortality (the species)
we have created God
(a supreme being)
probably not carbon-based
to encompass every universe
but is God
inside or outside
consciousness? Can God
tell us what to do
or must we tell God
alone
what to do?
                      Here is ego
projecting personality, exerting force
on community, asserting the existence
and predominance of component DNA.
An already hackneyed theory that DNA
survival drives
procreation, personality, savings bonds
everything but poetry (most poems included).

Mustache, cowboy hat
horse whisperer, gulag master
Odysseus, King Lear
                                      salvation in the details.
Yes, these personalities individual and interesting
as opossum, bear
oak and ash
beech nut, pine cone
Grand Canyon sandstone, Green Mountain granite.

--slightly out of tune

Am I right to hedge my bets on being famous, ply my arts all day alone,
silence, no tv? Mark said, the difference is people are actually listening
to **** Jagger, but I thought that’s not so big a difference.

When Dad died it only reinforced the futility of our daily efforts
notwithstanding my hopeful eulogy about our responsibilities to each
      other.

People listened then, and closely, searching for an echo
from the abyss. What is this abyss and how do I know
it’s there?

Carrying a sleeping baby.
Cleaning after a successful party.

Camping beyond mountains more mountains.
Playing trumpet on the streets of New York City.

Eating although the food supply is deeply compromised.
Flying with Democrats and Republicans, evangelicals and atheists.

Flying like a fruit fly that won’t quit mating.
Cool as a hummingbird in a stream’s wet spray.

Abstaining wholly, absent from worldly life.
Two dogs fighting but not biting hard.

Chanting as if the planet were mending.
Gourmet dining, devout prayer, loving Mary.

Evenings watching tv. Scotch and Star Trek.
Taking off Emily Dickinson’s clothes.

Meeting in the meeting house, arguing and praying.
Planning a legacy as if you knew enough to control events.

Pursuing happiness as a naturalist or humanist.
Spinning with the planet, performing the history that surrounds us.

Killing many Germans, saving many Jews.
Doing less until one thing’s done well.

Fainting from staring at candles through stained glass windows.
Morning, a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second warming your
        bones.

Manipulating symbols, solving equations.
Disregarding tweets and facebook persuasions.

Sitting with a tiny Buddha near a rushing stream cutting a gorge.
Running, disciplining myself, making myself healthy.

Ingesting drugs, throwing die, drinking sludge.
Growing varicolored corn.

Participating in the cause because it’s impossible not to participate in
      the effect.
Running over a chipmunk, groundhog or a skunk.

Lying face down in the emergency room facing doom.
Waking up Monday thinking Sweet Saturday! but soon remembering
      your trick knee.

Turning the towering young thunder of my anger against my sons.
Regretting the callow dispassion with which I met my parents’ quietus.

Lawn mowing, leaf blowing, yapping dogs, napping old people.
No jets but a rooster mornings, cows and goats.

Al is painting an apartment. Sirma is cleaning the floors. Felix is taking
      out the garbage.
Deciding tentatively I slightly prefer Heifetz’ to Oistrakh’s Sibelius.

No cedar waxwings, no chickadees, but beautiful moon!
If you’re alone as you get, why are you crying?

Kissed his student.
Punched his friend.
Accused her lover.

What if China's navy asserts control where our navy also patrols?
Should we concede the South China Sea? Not on your life! Or maybe.
Lives may be lost but so what. There's so much biomass in the
      crosswalks.

Lord have mercy on my soul
Which means bring my confusion into an expressible state before it's
      too late.
Sal went to jail. I belong to the loved ones. Never may the anarchic
      man's thoughts be my thoughts. Not one.

It could be cancer or just a cyst
That killed Frost's considerable speck
Instead of considering its considerable intelligence.

Although bottomless ancient night stretches
From your short life forward, remember
It also stretches backward without measure.

There are few straight lines in nature and only one alternative to
      ageing, so **** it up!
Suppose everything's fine and you've wasted your time wearing
      sackcloth over your soul?
Start now knowing joy.

The April morning's quiet
and so is the November.
Wherever people outnumber trees
or the dominant cover type
is unquiet. Nothing wrong with that.
Walt got it right, and Jane Jacobs:
the city is an experienced,
used beauty. Her toes are long,
nails thick and hair thin. Yet
her kisses can be sweet; or
smell of ****. All my life I've tried to point my window toward
some narrow wedge of nature.
On ****** Ave., over the roof
beyond the chimneys to the park
where every dog was walked.
Could I survive soot and an air shaft now, pigeons and cats,
or even a desk in the legislature for my lot in life. How about
prison like Etheridge Knight,
Nazim Hikmet?
I've gotten soft.
When he builds that house in the pocket
wetland my window now looks out on,
the developer will have given me what I need.
Amphibian mortality,
gravel, fill,
oak, ash and maples felled. Good
to the last drop is our bitterness, our love.

I have the shape of the institution.
Each email address is a human.

They are known by their words and actions.
The whole wide world is just a fraction

of all I do not know. Expansion
and contraction, breathe in, out, meditation

on existence, non-existence, creation
and duration. I have no explanation

for fusion, fission, taxonomic relations
or artificial classification.

More I do not know: locomotion
by combustion, electron separation

and transportation via superconduction
which supports the idea of the unified nation.

What girls are like behind their eyes. *******
a useful restraint on overpopulation.

The story of a life, my life, any life, cohesion
must be rationed, conjured, a fiction

about a vexed, tenacious town, its rail station
truck stop, high school, night spots, recreations

the temporary citizens enact visions
dream-like orations, ballets, conflagrations

to in the end receive in annals honorable mention
from family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, institutions.

You may feel about the planet what
you feel about a great baseball team or band:
that once there was a moment when, unknown
to us at the time, we convened
and lost and found ourselves in what we created.

Who should I thank for this day?
A fresh-mown lawn is a robin's repast.
A bear a black bear a rolling delicately dancing
graceful as silence sailing through the ferns and understory
unafraid and in no hurry.

My musician referral service, vacation rental business,
nonprofit management system, plant identification database,
great American songbook and anthology of poems. Coach says
in a thousand years back and forth games like lacrosse and soccer
will be played against genetically engineered primates

but baseball will be played solely by humans.
In a thousand years, amen.

To read or watch movies, that is the question.
When tired at workday's end, depressed about death's
certainty and my recent surgery
unable to contribute purpose
i.e., figure out whether to bomb Iran
or worship Krshna
and other gods such as Homer gives us in the Iliad
I lack vision therefore I choose television.
Chemistry text, bifurcated plant key
esp. grasses, intro to calculus, physics
unopened time slides by inexorably.
That's the dilemma with no resolution,
drooping rachis, striations on the lemma.
Dying chooses you. You don't choose dying.
So go slow as the day will allow.
The cancer patient's real work is facing
harsh realities and making adjustments:
getting the most out of life, considering
what his children will need after he's gone,
preparing his wife, parents, colleagues and friends,
and completing important professional tasks.
Get the most out of life. That's all God asks.
In Life of Pi the tiger is tiresome, short-sighted
eating everything in sight today, no plan for tomorrow.
The boy, however, is beautiful, reading
the lifeboat manual, building a resting place on the ocean
from oars and life vests, writing about his emotions,
loneliness and observations. The tiger's obsession
with killing keeps our boy alive with fear,
an aphrodisiac, a distraction from any hint
of hopelessness. And then there is the ultimate unknown,
the boy's conversations with Krshna which explain
the innumerable stars and their gentle glow.

"The question should not be in what ways writing and utterance trope each other, but how both are involved with number. Without relating the technology of writing to number (as opposed to sound or drawing), it is impossible to discuss it meaningfully as an aspect of versecraft."

          Courage to write and courage to not write. Read
          The great poets and highly accomplished letters
          Of leaders. Yet the war and the book have lives
          Of their own. Vacuum house, analyze mankind.
          His idea of himself. Ideas subsumed
          By better ones unite people into one people.
          I watch from my little bowl of nuts. Watch
          The one red squirrel and the many gray.
          Watch the nuthatch pair, platoon of chickadees.
          Here is what I say: When we can go
          From planet to planet on nothing but air,
          Leaving behind a drop of water,
          No burger bags blowin’ in the sun,
          I’ll love my children, my dogs and be happy.

"What is needed is a way to pry apart the polar, mimetic fiction that undergirds discussions (even sympathetic ones) of writing and versification, and see how we can relate writing to measure. Roy Harris’ investigations into the origin of writing make this connection possible."

          Electronic millennium. A long silence
          Wouldn’t hurt. Not that the national debate
          Should cease, it should proceed, passionate
          And furious. Those who have studied the matter
          And have something to say should write cogent
          Opinion pieces on the totalitarian
          Tendencies of minaret Islamists,
          The terminal contradiction of advancing
          Democracy with the unitary military.
          George Washington would not have approved
          And even Lincoln vacillated between
          The practicalities of preserving union
          And the ideal of freeing slaves. The president
          Carries his burden of matter, the physics
          Of existence cannot change our aloneness
          Or the butterfly’s importance, the very
          Last insects at the screens of August.
          It is life we face and death we meet.

"He argues that the origin of writing did not lie in the drawing of figures, or attempts to imitate speech, but in the recording of number. According to Harris, the oldest ‘writing’ that we have, like that on the 11, 000-year-old Ishango bone, is in ‘lines.’ The surface is scored with rows of short, parallel strokes, which probably served a numerical function. We still use such scoring systems today on occasion."

          OK, different strokes. But reading North’s poems
          And his predecessors’ in which noun and verb
          Are so far separated by modifiers,
          Post-positioned prepositions, diversions
          Into ditches, gardens, heavens, I don’t know
          What to do laugh or put the book down and eat
          Several cookies. In other words, anything goes,
          There truth resides. 1/3 life in suburbs,
          1/3 on the subway, and the last third
          On the mountain. A fourth hallucinating
          In heaven. That’s how it goes. You get what you believe.
          Bones in mud. It’s always possible I suppose
          That for nine months analogous or symmetrical
          With gestation our souls wander call it limbo,
          Doing the limbo and harassing the living
          With unanswerable questions, finally accepting
          Free molecular rent in a cubic meter
          Of interstellar space, a rose hip.
         
"Harris speculates about counting by scoring:"
'What is relevant for our present purposes is the fact that counting is associated in many cultures with primitive forms of recording which have a graphically isomorphic basis... The iconic origin of such recording systems is hardly open to doubt: the notch or stroke corresponds to the human finger...'

          Partridgeberry, mugwort, mats of raspberry,
          Cranberry, bearberry, autumn eleagnus,
          Autumn Nocturne, Autumn Leaves, the changes
          To the tunes and the scientific names.
          When it doesn’t matter what you do
          You’re probably doing something new.
          That’s a woodpecker. That’s a moth. I’m bounded
          By my surroundings, I feel at home.
          Could be Schenectady. Could be Troy.
          One of many small cities in which to while
          Away my anonymity. Be specific.
          Not asphalt but impermeable surface.
          Not trees but mature stems. Quercus rubrus—
          Quality veneer. Into such a garden
          Have a victor and a fool penetrated.

'In short, the rows of strokes are graphically isomorphic with just that subpart of the recorder’s oral language which comprises the corresponding words used for counting. It makes no difference whether we ‘read’ the sign pictorially as standing for so many fingers held up, or scriptorially as standing for a certain numeral.'

          In a crowded world every action results
          In an equal and overwrought reaction.
          Yet, all the energy recycles
          And there is not one thermal unit more or less
          When all is said and won. Even when the tribes
          Were isolated behind mountain ranges
          And rushing rivers, they sought each other out
          For trading and for taking. Humanity
          Is lonely. Humor is the only remedy
          And going to your daily discipline
          The only way past Monday. Join the torrential
          Flow of words, emotion, wit and erudition.
          It is embarrassing to see a good writer
          Work himself into a lather, having
          Something to say. A system of beliefs
          To illustrate, characters dressed accordingly.
          Gardens and wilderness in which to wander.
          A cave with a view. The plumbing problem never
          Resolves. Fax your results. We’ll be working late.

"Along with other evidence, this leads him to argue that the invention of writing–or the division of writing and drawing into separate functions–occurred when the graphic representation of number shifted from the token-iterative system that appears on the Ishango bone, to type-slotting."

          Electricity is occult enough for me.
          Excessive classifying could be fascist!
          Yet how else can one organize people
          Into contexts. By their associations.
          Family, work, habits, each assigned
          A day of the week, moon of the month.
          Poets rhyme, jazz musicians count time.
          There is more than one way to make war. By
          Declaration, by punishing offenses
          Against the law of nations, by granting letters
          Of mark and reprisal, by making rules
          Concerning captures on land and water, by
          Suppressing insurrections and repelling invasions,
          Erecting forts, magazines, arsenals,
          Dock yards and other needful buildings. Today
          I face the blank page between the finished pages.

"Harris gives the following example of what he means:"
'The progression from recording sixty sheep by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by sixty strokes to recording the same information by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by a second sign indicating ‘sixty’ is a progression which has already crossed the boundary between pictorial and scriptorial signs.'

          When my grandmother considered it favorable
          That I would be a writer, she had in mind
          Clear commentary from which many people
          Would derive meaning. No such luck. My writings
          Are like the flicking tail of that flycatcher,
          And I am the flycatcher, weighing but an ounce.
          My grandfather’s rough-hewn peasant chairs
          Are well known by my sons though they never knew him
          And the chairs were not hewn, just owned by him.
          One is in a corner of the room and two
          Are scrimmaged around a computer screen.
          Computers post-date him and cars post-date
          His father and so on. If the grid collapses,
          The crops fail and the roads close, some will be forced
          Across boundaries among boulders, naming snakes
          And stars according to memory.
          They will be hungry, mortal and strong.

'A token-iterative sign-system is in effect equivalent to a verbal sublanguage which is restricted to messages of the form ‘sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep...’, or ‘sheep, another, another, another...’, whereas an emblem-slotting system is equivalent to a sublanguage which can handle messages of the form ‘sheep, sixty’.Token-iterative lists are, in principle, lists as long as the number of individual items recorded. With a slot list, on the other hand, we get no information simply by counting the number of marks it contains.'
"When this change occurred it opened ‘a gap between the pictorial and scriptorial function of the emblematic sign’, which had been previously inseparable in the counting represented by rows of slashes."

          No book I know tells if blue cohosh
          Caulophyllum thalictroides—a barberry—
          Is edible. Other barberries are
          But that blue berry looks risky to me.
          And May-apple—Podophyllum—other
          Than the fruit itself which is definitely
          Sweet. So I read, not sure of myself.
          There is a patience with which to wait out anger,
          And a patience with which to endure ignorance.
          The job is everything. It is freedom
          And purpose and religion. It is acceptance
          And shelter and sustenance. Last night
          We were watching Tweet’s show: groveling before
          The rich pharisee’s judgements. I said no
          Amount of money could make me grovel
          Before that guy. His toupe’s gayer than his lisp.
          But who am I? You think bullets won’t ****?
          I’m the guy they put before a wall and shoot
          Then eat lunch. But that feeling passed quickly.

"This semiological gap, made writing possible because it meant that signs could be manipulated to ‘slot’, or identify, anything whatsoever. The open-ended quality of the scriptorial sign was a necessary precondition for the development of writing systems."

          Lately I’ve been copying wholesale
          From the great poems, lines and ideas not my own
          Or owned by all? It’s ok, I can be ignored
          Or appreciated in a future city,
          By a future shore. The honest man can
          Only recognize what he loves and point to it.
          That Borges poem called In Praise of Darkness.
          Emerson and snow. A meditation
          That bumps serenely, with acceptance,
          Between things and thoughts. It is said one should
          Know for whom, to whom one is writing.
          These are letters to those who love letter writing.

"As Harris points out, no writing system is accurately phonetic. Even the alphabet only highlights certain phenomena in the speech stream. The reason for this is that alphabetic writing did not begin as a simpler or more accurate way to record speech than other writing systems, but as an easier way to write."

          A possible cancer had taken me
          To the edge of my endurance. Pokeweed,
          Poisonous, became attractive. Red stems
          And juicy black berries. I had packed warm clothes
          And pain killers. Why the warm clothes if this
          Was to be my last walk? To die in comfort
          Without a fly’s buzz. Overlooking a ravine,
          Sea of mountains, dawn. But it proved a false alarm.
          Now Sunday will be a holy day of plant
          Identification. Nothing better
          Than lying in leaf litter, skin drying
          To a taut drum. Ravens stay away!
          Until cougar’s had his fill! Instead
          I showed the boys pokeweed growing among blackberries
          And taught them the differences and uses.

"Through a radical reduction in the number of signs, the alphabet simplified the scriptorial system in and of itself. The evolution of writing therefore may look like this: simple forms of counting preceded the complications of pictorial representation, which in turn led to simplification of the writing system in cultures that adopted the alphabet."

          I was running uphill, parallel to
          The Taconics extending northward into
          Vermont (I find Vermonters in their jalopies
          Annoying but admire them for planning
          To arrest the president for war crimes) when
          I happened upon a flock of cedar waxwings—
          Said to be a gentle and politic bird—
          Sharing—very orderly—dried frozen grapes
          On the vine. (Rose hips, buckthorn, ash, pokeweed.)
          I tried one, too, the two seeds in my mouth
          Keeping me company down the mountain.
          I see no downside whatsoever
          To compensating for global warming,
          Constructing the green energy economy.
          New inventions may facilitate
          Our transportation to other planets.
          Yesterday a young man, Barack Obama,
          Won Iowa. I’m hopeful he will
          Articulate an international vision,
          A world order in which each neighborhood’s
          Good as another. I have no particular
          Love for writers; they’re a dime a dozen.
          But so are chickadees and I love them!

"Discussing the power of inscriptions of number, Harris points out:"
'Counting is in its very essence magical, if any human practice at all is. For numbers are things no one has ever seen or heard or touched. Yet somehow they exist, and their existence can be confirmed in quite everyday terms by all kinds of humdrum procedures which allow mere mortals to agree beyond any shadow of a doubt as to ‘how many’ eggs there are in a basket or ‘how many’ loaves of bread on the table.'

          True, nature would be a stern, unforgiving
          Mistress too, and man is but her right hand
          Acting on her command. How cold! How hot!
          The individual doing what he loves or not.
          Trees and cities. Herons, hawks. What we fail
          To govern in ourselves, nature will.
          We caught the killer and his gorillas,
          Now let’s go home, let the “innocent” choose
          Up sides. A good thing was done but the tyrant
          Should’ve been undone through global governance.
          Writing is divination using rhymes
          And estimations. Words like mammals
          Come near your sleeping head. Last night I emerged
          From the hum of our refrigerator
          Under a hazy, phaseless moon. The peepers
          Were an exact expression of my happiness.

"Or, one might add, for how many stanzas there are in a poem, or lines in a stanza, or stresses, feet, or syllables in a line, or occurrences of particular syntactical or grammatical patterns, and so on. As every serious student of versification has always understood, versification is about counting language."

          5:30-6 write poetry,
          6-7 ****, shave and shower, stretch
          Then get dressed, 7-7:30
          Clean house, 7:30-8 drive to work
          8-6 work (except Monday and Friday
          Work 8-4, basketball 4-6)
          6-7 drive home, shop, help make dinner
          7-8 eat dinner, read paper,
          Watch McNeil-Lehrer News Hour,
          8-9 play trumpet, study plants, type poems
          9-10 watch TV Mon: Murphy, Cybil,
          Tues: Frazier, Grace, Wed: Roseanne, Ellen,
          Thurs: Seinfeld, Friends, Fri: go out to dinner,
          10-11 read, except Tues watch
          NYPD Blue, Fri: Friday Night Lights,
          11 sleep. I could send this to the networks,
          Get a gizmo in my box. I hope my
          Schedule won't be interrupted for war.
          My dentist asked had I seen this morning’s
          Press conference, didn’t it just scare the ****
          Out of you. I said your bill is what scares
          The **** out of me. But here I am, writing
          And the sphere’s still turning. Or should I say
          Burning. As long as you write one poem per day
          You’ve left a little litter in the world.

"The reason to write verse is less to score the voice than to imbue words with the magical quality of counting. That is why meter, or measure, is at the heart of debates over all verse forms, including free verse."

          Vigorous wind, voracious ocean,
          Many merciless hard frosts, hurricanes.
          The bed of a human, its smell and warmth
          36 teeth, 46 chromosomes, 2 feet, a loose dime,
          61 summers, some soot, some sand,
          Thunderstorms. I wake up to a lightning strike
          And my dream incinerates. When they say
          Life is but a dream, that’s what they mean.
          The writer working hard, telling the story
          Of what happened yesterday or yesteryear,
          A man’s born to a country not his choosing,
          Let labor flow like capital, of mere being!
          Pomegranate juice, broccoli, arugula,
          Brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower,
          Collard greens, kale, radishes, turnips,
          Garlic, leeks, scallions, onions, 2 lbs
          Swordfish, tomatoes (8 medium),
          3 cups almonds, carrots, a sweet potato,
          Winter squash, cantaloupe, mangoes, watermelon.
          2 daily writing exercises,
          50 words on any subject: complaint, headache.
          The imagination applies a
          Countervailing pressure to reality.
          Writing badly is the best revenge.

"Number is one of the creative grounds of poetry, and the idea that writing grew out of counting is the missing link in studies of the graphic in versification. It is almost uncanny that lines of verse look exactly like the most primitive ways of counting–parallel scorings that can be numbered."

          What you do to one side of the equation
          You gotta do to the other. Isolate
          The variable. Combine like terms. Metaphors
          And analogs are reduced to least common
          Denominators. Multiply through (parentheses).
          Write a new equation after each operation.
          Inscribe neatly. Check your work. Imagine
          That if you’re wrong, the astronauts burn.
          Change the signs which will avoid going
          The wrong way down the number line. Zero
          Is the middle of your universe.
          There it is, calm, comfortable as an egg
          On a spoon. That is, before possibilities
          Become probabilities. This is just
          Another equation manipulated
          With opposable digits. For at the ends
          Of your guns is the earliest calculator
          A magical machine which converts
          Numbers to words and words to numbers,
          Measures the mists, frequency and wavelength,
          Of the material penumbra.

"Verses are countable in exactly the way that token-iterative digits are countable, from either end of the sequence. Each one indicates only its singularity, not a number. Every poem in lines effaces, or predates, the distinction between writing and drawing in the same way as the lines on the Ishango bone."

I waited too long
to mow my lawn
biopsy my lung
yet lived long enough, anon,
however long is long.
Whatever. It's not wrong
to count along
while busy living. Sing
and stay strong
absorb the sun's photons
and store them in your bones.

Those bones
outlast slights and spurns
are white as lightning and strong
as sticks and stones.
Inside is one's
spirit, soul, the nameless one
the one that's never known.
It has no cell phone
can't communicate or even moan.
Therefore. Why complain?
Have some fun.

Soon
I'll be undone
underground
my garden burned down.
So what. John Donne
died and so did Milton.
Emerson too, and Whitman.
Get over it. Vote. Love. When
the train comes in the station
whistle with it, wish on
stars with passion
or careful hesitation.
Anything's fine, within reason.

Season by season
things get done.
Algebra and calculus, Malcolm X, George Washington.
No taxation
without representation.
A gun
in every den.
People will be governed
one way or another, by a king
or trusted friend. Corporation.
Men
are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than
to right themselves by abolishing the Evils to which they are        
      resigned.

I'm too young
to die! I cry. My generation
cannot outrun the sun
but I want to see what happens
next, a tsunami or tornado, rain
and wind beyond our comprehension
hit in the head by speeding debris, irony
of ironies! plastic contraptions,
rotting computers and yogurt cups, pain
in the baby! Moment's
notice. None,
I notice, live long
enough to see the end. Amen. A million

years hence
human sense
has so modified and mutated under
other moons
we share one mind
and everything's remembered by everyone.
Look it up. There is no death, just perfect rest. A perfect tan
is possible, and work is fun.
I'm going there when I pass on
because souls will travel at warp speeds, using nuclear fusion.
About suffering, religion
was right (and wrong) all along.

Is it stress,
or loss, despair and survival
we must discuss.
                                    Stress is just the symptom
of a universe intent to destroy the individual
before it births new life. It sends the dogs
after us, after the holocaust, in the tattered ruins
of our city.
                        There is this despair and expectation
of destruction, but somewhere there is still also
simple sky blue,
flowers among railroad ties,
true love between ****** partners.

Is it ***,
or love, companionship and reliableness
we must expect.
                                   ***, nothing but laying my head
at your ****, can interest me sometimes. Your legs
lead to a pleasure that seems infinite and smells
perfect.
                  So there is this tenderness, a connection
like a suction to the biological that is ephemeral
as snow on the ground,
one elk in aspen,
death and nothing less.

Although I hardly gave it a thought
I didn't really doubt
our miniature juniper, a bonsai,
would survive our desert vacation.
                                                       ­   It likes the dry
air of our home, needs water
once a week at most and seems
meditative and active, both. While away
I rediscovered my love of agaves -
                                                          sotol­ and century
plant - met Mortonia and became
reacquainted with squawbush, its citrus
drupe which makes traveling the long horizon
of the desert uplands endurable.
                                                      ­    Live oaks - emory,
wavyleaf - dominant and regally spaced
giving ground to mesquite only on the sere
sand flats. I counted and drew inflorescenses,
spikelets, florets, awns but grasses
                                                         ­  remain a mystery
their microscopic parts. This year
I'll study, give them serious thought before
our Spring starts. The cactus wren was the one
bird I could be certain about. Sunsets
                                                         ­  made me sorry
the desert is not my home. But the ocotilloes
flowered before we left and that made up
for the vicious attack of a hedgehog cactus.
Impressive, ponderosa pine and Arizona cypress
                                                         ­  the canyon canopy
watered with snowmelt and along the high cliffs
limestone formations predating our arrival by
ten million years of weather. Newspapers
kept us aware humanity had not accomplished yet
                                                           the end of history
and that was fair. The planes were full of citizens
who no longer applaud upon landing. Snow flew,
not a pinyon pine or manzanita within two moons
walking. On the dining room sideboard, waiting,
                                                        ­   our miniature juniper.

For the accountant, the librarian, on this cold day
there is no revelation. He will go his own way
to the roar of the tinnitus in his ears.
About our war what is there to say. Yesterday
a flock of bluebirds was the only color in the woods.
Have they arrived too early for their good?
Of Judith and Inanna I have Korf's fears.

Inanna is generous, Judith is dangerous.
On each the wise elders depend for sustenance,
protection. Agriculture is ******
and wars end when men remember *******.
To savor the young woman's thighs and the old one's food,
to water her womb and cut her wood.
Is this not what's real, the actual, the animal?

The women I have known were bluebirds and crows, such
nuthatches, cardinals, robins, an occasional thrush.
They did not consider their bodies holy,
they found my seduction easy. What good luck
on the bed, in the light of the land, in our youth.
Our enemy eventually becomes our brother,
his misery lifted by coming to her city.

You'll soon lose interest in walking
and talking and wearing the cap
of a fool. You'll.
            Words: walk, talk, wear, cap, fool, you, soon, lose.

Idea!: Four word poems, ten
syllables per line, six
lines per paragraph. Graph.
            Words: idea, word, poem, syllable, line, paragraph, per, graph.

The night I wrecked my father's car
necking with my date after the dance
inching forward into traffic
foot tapping the brake like an *******.
            Words: night, car, father, wreck, date, dance, neck, traffic, inch,
            foot, tap, brake.

The USFS issued paper sleeping bags
like tissues during forest fires and fed us
steak and pop. All you could eat.
            Words: paper, bag, sleep, tissue, fire, steak, pop, eat, food,
            forest, us.

Things hurt. Pain is a message
to shut up and slow down.
Breathe deep, take care. Wait and see.
            Words: hurt, pain, shut, slow, breathe, care, wait, see, deep,
            message.

Just as the war
in the Iliad goes back
and forth according to Hector's
fortunes, so does marriage and a truck in mud.
            Words: just, war, back, forth, fortune, marriage, truck, mud.

Fear destroys the last free assessment of life.
But what is there to fear. Death
is most of all like sleep. Death
is but a dream missed.
            Words: fear, free, assess, destroy, life, death, sleep, dream, like,
            but, miss.

Mid-spring, skinny, black, blind
eastern tent caterpillars -
Malacosoma americanum -
falling from the cherry tree
leaning, human, over our deck.
Irksome. Mash and kick
them with my feet, continue
practicing or reading.

Three weeks later, reading
late at night. Heavy-bodied
black-eyed, reflexed antennae -
many hundreds of moths
crave the lamplight, some attaining
extinction through cracks
around the window screen. Vexing.
Until next morning, I look
up the name that has eluded me
all spring and early summer.

The single-minded moth and larval colony -
one small monophony.

Spring is sprung.
Clouds of maple.
Skies of pine.

Red in green.
Serviceberry understory.
Spring is sprung.

Skunk cabbage spathe.
Black birch sap.
Poplar flowers.

Opossum tires.
Spring is sprung.
Blackbird wing.

Wasps won't sting.
My father died.
Town meeting Monday.

Spring is sprung.
Sing cuccu!
There's no down side.

Infinite willow.
Leaning oak.
Spring and sprung.

Budding flame.
Budding thumb.
Cat claw.

Bird yolk.
Spring is sprung.
Dandelion

Shoots. Arrowhead
Roots. Waterproof
Boots. Old bed young.

Spring is sprung.
Ring and wrong.
Thank and thought.

Seed and sawn.
Wait and walk.
Spring is sprung.

In disaster and war movies
the protagonist (Queen) and her immediate circle
are protected from anonymous death. They may die (one by
      one or all at once)
but someone at least grieves.
Or the audience is full of glee.

But in Star Wars (for instance)
what about the many hundreds of nameless, faceless soldiers
in body armor and visored helmets, or planetary citizens,
who fall by the dozens or more, like the leaves this rich fall.
      I think
no one thinks

how one of them may have had her first lover the night before
and one may be leaving behind two sons he read to last night
and loved with all his heart.
Neither belief in God nor being a god entertained
can explain or forgive this oversight.

Ah, how sweet
the film in which no actor dies or if they do
it's from their own disease or golden age.
People grieve for the soul that left
and celebrate the soul that flew.

I was in Providence for a conference,
a town I had thought insignificant, not a city to be considered
a city in flight. But that night they lit
one hundred bonfires in the river running up through the streets
      and the face of every girl and woman with her lover
by firelight was beautiful.

Had the city been nuked
by a terrorist or rogue nation I would not have minded dying
      there,
with them, that night. It is possible
to be several million strong
and every homeless man with a singing voice belong.

Dinner with old friends:
salmon with red cabbage, asparagus, Caesar's salad, penne
      with broccoli, two white wines.
Jane Jacobs could analyze how it all got to our table
or even how their daughter came to us from Cambodia.
The economy or market bringing a thing of beauty, the farms,
      the trucks,
such comfort. The ancients knew this too
yet we are anxious about famine, genocide and nuclear war.
How can we organize (govern) ourselves to end self-imposed
      suffering?
That Quebec and Puerto Rico may secede peacefully at any
      time a majority chooses is a source of pride. Why not
      Kurds, Chechyns, Tibetans and Armenians?

Difficult to write a poem about it. At table, candlelight, we
      debate
or whine about the other side winning and making a mess
of our lives. The election could be stolen, tampering with
      voting machines,
what policy question does that possibility raise? War in Iraq,
school testing, prison population. Religion, the abyss
      surrounding the
little promontory life.

It'll all work out in the end. Go to your daily practice, be a
      good citizen.
Another failed effort to write what I mean. Such confusion, yet
two white wines.

The teacher dies having made her small contribution
to the colonization of other planets by motivating
a boy who would otherwise be a coal miner to become
a rocket engineer.
                                  Throughout the nation teachers
are sending their prize pupils through the funnel
flask to produce technology from pure science.
The mother and father are good, disciplined, god-
fearing people who stand firm against dissolution
and chaos. They hold their clod of soil in place
and others do the same to create the landscape
of community.
                            Communities across the nation
and the world produce the many to support the few
who make the tools and do the math to colonize
the planets. Once the secret of warp speed is
discovered, expansion of the species is
limitless.
                   Perhaps learning Sidewinder, playing it
imperfectly, is not a direct contribution to destiny.
What can I say. Please yourself. So
insignificant no one notices or cares. Yet
some stories may be told for centuries. Homer,
Shakespeare, Bible.
                                   It takes constantly renewed
consciousness to persevere, retell the stories and
interpret lessons. You go, girl.

Supermarket celebration
shoppers are cytoplasm searching
for cellulose, muscle, photosynthesis.

Oils, petrochemical and vegetable
love: faith and trust
for instance, the Food and Drug Administration.

In America, the custom is
to avoid meeting the other shoppers' eyes. We graze
like cows or wander as zombies to the oldies played over the aisles.

I've always liked it here.
Cornucopia, yes. Also
a place to be alone and depressed, or cool off.

Water and bone
and the known ingredients. Neurons
for remembering, calculating, touching stuff.

I have a favorite bagger
who has the smile of a lover,
wouldn't rather be elsewhere.

Like glamour stars in bikinis
(but unlike tomatoes and bananas)
cashiers and clerks are admired from afar.

Joe says What's not to like? Ice cream, yogurt,
profit, tofu.
To eat your fill is a blasphemy against God.

The debate between free will and fate has taken a hard right
turn to neuroscience, Brodmann area 4 the primary motor
cortex of the brain located in the posterior frontal lobe
(the one cut out of the one who once flew over the cuckoo's nest).
This area of the cortex has the pattern of an homunculus!
a little man, a troll, the all-wise, mandragon, the golem of Jewish
      folklore.

This little man has a ***** that, when fully engorged, is
equal in size to his entire body. However, diseases
such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Lou Gehrig's and
      Creutzfeldt-Jakob
are gunning for him. His basal ganglia are garbled
and he ends up giving poor advice and making bad decisions.
Who can say what happens to his soul or cells or if all will be given
      or well?

I was listening to the famous astronomer on public radio
who expressed the certainty there is no death, your soul
is immortal, it exists outside of time (but not space?). That's because
time exists only in the human mind (as does the universe
including the professional baseball season which is canceled when
      you're dead).
By Spring, my problems will be solved or ignored, either way is
      good.

"Imagine if we taught baseball the way we teach science. Until they
      were twelve children would
read about baseball technique and occasionally hear inspirational
      stories of the great baseball
players. They would answer quizzes about baseball rules. They
      would practice fundamental
baseball skills, throwing the ball to second base twenty times in a
      row. Undergraduates might
be allowed under strict supervision to reproduce historic baseball
      plays. But only in graduate school
would they, at last, actually get to play a game." --Alison Gopnik

Groundhog holds the knowledge of death without dying
for man needs help from every creature born.
Will the holocaust wipe the smile off the face of our romantic comedy
or will laughter outlast the outburst?
About the dark times will there be singing?
Yes, there will be singing and some of the songs will be sidesplitting.

Solving the ****** reveals the city. Nature of kinships and economic
      sustenance,
who loves whom and why, when things happened and how they lost
      and found themselves
in what happened. Because a meter-making argument cannot appear
from nothingness, purposelessness, just cold.
He does not go where he was supposed to go. He is in the desert,
      Sonoran desert, counting cactus buds and ocotillo blooms.
This is the afterlife for which he has always longed.

Electron herders,
that's us. It began
earnestly late 20th century.
The first organic computers
using polymerase and ADP
came later. Weaponry
via numbers, words
magically appearing,
telepathy. Measurements
in which the last significant digit
is the Other. However
immediately depleted
our resources were,
antibiotics were always at the ready.
Forgetting what we knew,
reverting to austerity
because in times of prosperity
we forgot to be austere.
It's the uncertainty principle
taken to the nth degree
where the bad god resides,
Zeus, passionate, confused, obtuse.
Yes, we are electron herders
matter gatherers and shapers
of our time. Cancerous
cysts, irrational exuberance,
collective experience, experiments
gone well or wrong,
we were trying all along
to last forever. Flood and fire
saw to that.
Prospero was our answer
who threw his book
into the sea and wanted to be
mortal, meditative.
Find himself. We found
the world without the self
cornus to oxalis
orbitals and calculus
waves and particles
equally likely to be
within us as without us.

1

At peace perhaps too much
a fine Spring rain
we seek news from the desert or capitol
of those who have dedicated their lives to losing their lives
      for us
adventurers, ancient honor, land runners
this campaign a must to advance one's career
a war president needs war

2

All you need to know is the names of things
chambers of commerce and large corporations
elements, products, decay fungi, egg masses
cultivars and their relation to wild grasses and the edge
uses of herbs, languages of mammals,
purposes of insects, placement of rocks
the names of everything by which we know our way

3

I've read about those remarkable souls who maintain
      self-control
among murderers and the unentertained multitude
who may have even spoken persuasively
at the right moment for speaking
and thus attracted a now unwanted immortality
there are only two ways you can tell
a bird of prey from a vision - humor and ritual

4

the Fedex gal
would be unlike taking off Emily Dickinson's clothes
over the counter perfume and spray paint hair
postman's shorts, black socks
a woman's legs are much like a man's
yet she too is beautiful, too beautiful, weekends
boating with her man

5

Suburbs, lawns, blankets
in a long, long nursery of babies
napping, old, blameworthy
and, I say this respectfully, blind
certain and uninterested
in motives more subtle than their immediate comfort
Who am I to complain?

6

Plants, poems: riches
our financial advisor doesn't count. Good and simple
a man as he is. Comes tousled
from early morning golf and puffy
from a late night fight or lovefest with his wife.
Inchworm
letting out its rope down an oak.

7

Late afternoon meeting
like the dry samara, achene or capsule surrounding a seed
how often have I tried to escape
my need, community, chamber of commerce
you cannot drive
the roads are theirs and the signs, perhaps
you can walk if you can name the plants and rocks and are
      willing to die

8

O happy family
there's some contentment in letting community and family
      decide
your place in it. Gatekeepers -
unconscious god, invisible hand, natural selection -
kind when refraining from violence
when not responding with force to the universe's effort
to extinguish us.

Moby ****, geometry, physics.
Study every subject everyday.
Homework is an indicator of future success.
Success is not necessarily happiness but it helps.
Freedom is to formulate your own definition of success.
Happiness is an imaginary tree, its own reward, and a fact.
Facts and fiction may be memorialized in memos or found in dreams.
The story starts thus: Each summer the honeysuckles and the
      huckleberries . . .
The web is that extra brain we've all been dreaming of having.
Like jumping 4 meters or flying without a plane.
To fly like that must one first have homework?
Some say yes, some say don't. It depends on how you vote.
Happiness is what happens when everything that happens
Fits the time perfectly and it's all out of your hands.
Not exactly. You don't let go of the steering wheel while driving fast in
      the passing lane.
You look left and right and check your blind spots.
Homework is an introduction to everything you're not
And all you do not know. It's supposed to help you learn to know where
      you want to go before going where you have to go.
Otherwise you end up on Ulzana's raid
Bleeding, without a bandaid.
All the achievement in the world won't relieve your loneliness
Or satisfy your ****** longing. What girls are like behind their eyes.
Survival, procreation. That's all there is to love.
But the loved one is the one who can be trusted with your life.
Whether Christ or your wife. The Muslim moms.
On my walk in the woods I come to a sitting spot
Above a small gorge cut by a stream through hemlocks.
Here someone has left a statuette of the Buddha and the flags you see
Flapping in the wind at sky funerals.
This is a pretty good place to sit quietly and think about homework.

It was a woodcut in our high school history text, Unit 4
      Beginnings of the Modern World, that so disturbed,
from the Nuremburg Chronicles depicting the burning of the
      Jews, flat perspective,
faces of the victims among flames, in no particular agony, not
      especially Jewish,
during the Black Death 1/3 of Europe died 1347-1351 alone.
      Although
you die together you die alone.
Earlier that week, I had attended our 6th grade's performance of Fiddler       on the Roof, thinking
Coltrane should have recorded Matchmaker as a bookend to
      My Favorite Things
but as the play darkened
with the town's absorption into the diaspora, democracy
yet unthought of and rule of law a fig leaf for authority
Jasper, who played Zero Mostel, delivered his line well to
      the effect
you're just doing your jobs while wrecking our lives.

Anyway, nothing like that is happening here, is it?
The gardener planting tomatoes, the gravedigger finding skulls,
there is so much life a little death won't matter.
Jasper
was a beautiful ham,
big as Zero.
A friend posed
this question: must all states be melting pots like the United States?
I said yes
not because they should but since
it's inevitable. Let labor flow like capital!
America was the last word of the play and brought a tear of pride
      to my eye.

Immigration, exasperating argument re the Other.
How many's more than enough? 9 billion, a rational,
real number that exceeds or we're convinced
is within the carrying capacity of the planet.
Climate change is the new Black Death.
I like the Amerindian body type and face mixed in with the
      European, African.
The irrepressible economy rolls out reams of logs, ores of
      elements, bags of ice, fields of rice.
Embargo. The moon stares, bare, full of interstellar space.
Better a cold shoulder than a visit from our military.
The crazy Nazis must have felt themselves extraordinarily
      compassionate toward the mother, earth, the goddess,
      history, or some such abstraction and, thus, acted on a
      fraction of all they did not know.
Selfless soldiers just doing their jobs guarding the border or,
on the other hand, collecting ****** for the burning of the Jews.

Appointment to have ***** removed by robot-assisted surgeon.
Air-conditioned, no mosquitoes in the OR. When you arrive
You'll remove all your clothes. Naked before the ladies, nurses
Who have seen it all before. Mainly remember you're not unique.
Think about the government while they're mixing up the medicine.
There's always governance even if there's little or no government.
Back to counting backwards. Inside out, if I die, will I know it?

At 70, Jack's running the gauntlet with some skill!
Benny Golson wonders aloud what might have been
Had Clifford Brown not been killed in that auto accident.
Jack's girlfriend once said he was the reincarnation of Clifford
But he doesn't believe in ghosts, karma or an afterlife.
Benny's old girlfriend Betty inspired the tune Along Came Betty
And that's the most afterlife Benny or Betty's gonna get.

The Trojan bench being not as deep as the Greek
Once Sarpedon and Hector go down even the lucky shot
To Achilles' feet is not enough to save the town.
Aeneas is no match for wily Odysseus
Although unbeknownst to all he has the last laugh when Rome
Conquers Athens, the Myrmidons, what's left of Ilion
And the whole known world from India to Britain.

It's not bad to acknowledge death's primacy
Although after a while you stop remembering
To fear. That's when everything becomes clear
Purpose v. purposelessness matters less,
Anomie v. rule of law, that's a preference
Love v. loneliness, worth about 25 cents
Or a million bucks in the light of the holocaust.

Nothing but light, love and the majesty of death in the room.
Machines stand ready like marines, their beauty is in the motion
That overcomes inertia. The food supply is deeply compromised
So eat whatever you want. Mourning the dead is part of the business
Of healing and staying alive. When you get to the afterlife, walk with
      eyes open,
Ocotillo and cactus may be in flower. The robot does the work,
      imposes
Its own small order, like a ******* a bicycle with disorder in her hair.

First person singular prohibited. In order
to be more crow.
War! war! war! war! war!

Then there's that lowland wetland bird
around the stunted red pines crying
Birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy.

Hear the redwing blackbird chirring
Her, her, her... she
as one might expect, Spring.

Words for birds
since they're inaccessible. Aim
binoculars left, right, up, down, missing every time.

At the piano recital
Aaron made the penguins run, run, run, not waddle,
from a hungry polar bear!

Everything passes, even a massacre,
but birds outlast cars
and words like chemical and holocaust.

Woodpecker climbs oak,
Connecticut.
Not one neighbor heard the knocking.

The voice of a pewee
whose nest has fallen out of the tree.
Oh my! Oh me!

What did the wood thrush sing
that summer evening
teaching its young thrush meanings?

We should have gone outside instead of watching one
of the sillier, senseless, meaningless movies it is possible
to rent or buy. Winter or not the fields and woods
are at least real, commensal and understandable if
you know the genus and species. Know the genome
and biome. Learn the physics and music.

But this much reality requires an escape, hence
bad movie. A bad book is better than a bad movie.
A good movie trumps a bad book, but a good book is best
and a great poem trumps all. Will my son Zach be one
who applies the scientific method? Can Aaron explain
God's intentions to the people? Their mother and I will wait.

Exercising belief about unknowns.
Makes sense to take your best guess.
Using history, numbers, extrapolation.
Getting the trajectory right for re-entry.
Few dissenters left for climate change, evolution.
Nuclear power brings a process to earth
that occurs only in space. Dangerous
but necessary? Not a risk-averse weasel.

One among many mammals is the weasel,
not known for its consideration of unknowns
but, for its extreme caloric needs, considered dangerous.
My wife says in England violent gusts
forced a locomotive off its tracks. One interpretation
might reasonably be that the mother, earth,
has stopped mothering man. We're entering
a period of unknowns and must evolve.

What might this involve
and what adjustments are possibly feasible?
Walking rather than riding to the subway entrance,
using less electricity until more is known,
preserving agricultural soils and forest land,
buying fewer plastic contraptions.
My brother's washing his pajamas less often.

None of this may make the slightest difference
in how the earth and the sun and universe revolve.
But we are human and addicted to action,
the probable less attractive than the possible.
Also, there's no percentage in respecting death
unless it's imminent. Better to remain centered,
focused on food, child-bearing, war and the poem.

All driveways plowed, all lawns mowed.
Just in time before the first snow, I raked our leaves.
Two eight hour days. What percent of all time is that?
Draw a ray with point A the first pile of leaves
extending to the extrapolating end of universe.
.01 of Aaron. Zero of Zach.
Hawks playing, hunting, mating, canaries in the mine.

Having been too many places to count.
*** bars, infant formulas, fire crews, last rites, permanent
      jobs, traffic tickets, judges'chambers, out houses,
      wedding banquets, boiling teapots, frantic centuries,
      ****** tissues, presumed innocent, clear intentions,
      stainless steel.
Spiderweb glove. Deerfly earring. Daddylonglegs
      seeingeyedog.
Memorized songs. Privatized loans.
You cannot know what you're doing until you've done it.
Erudite sweep the floor. Articulate make the bed.
Infrared town hall. Crab nebula. Your last crap.
Eye of the tropical January sun. Slouching toward temperate
      zone.

We like trees.
Rocks. Crows.

Trees are good.
Shade. Food. Wood.

If they leave,
we'll leave, too.

Snow. How come
some there, none here.

Sun can ****
or be fun.

God can't care
about you, one.

Jacket caught
in thought thicket.

Barberry, rose
thorn in nose.

Elect a nobel laureate
not a noble idiot.

Eat. Eat so much
your bones grow.

Kinnakinnik. Chinquapin.
Almost edible words.

Naked buds, bears,
understory shrubs.

An old man remembers what he has been
yet the details are unimportant. Then
the outline disappears, and the meaning.

Good, I can die or go to work, be wise
or a ****. Rich or poor, the wind and rain
wear us away and it's o.k.

Ask what matters, that
question. Feeling the seasons, wearing a hat,
loving your woman, a good ****.

Children born. Two cells meet, multiply,
spiral into fetus. The mother is amazed:
an intelligence apart from herself.

The violent rainstorm kept me awake
although the lightning was still far away.
I lay in my bed and listened naked.

Spring peepers
stop peeping. A satellite
crosses sky. One peeper keeps peeping
in time to the satellite blinking, an eye.
Deep thinking.

I have no clue what Krshna taught Arjuna
but I like the name Atman a lot.
Atman. Atman. Where a man is at.
At all times. No matter what.
Gita, get in the action, gorgeous girl,
god is the answer, keep the meter.

Wisdom, none.
What Krshna tells Arjuna makes no sense.
I prefer mathematics.
Knowledge of how things are made and done
more than meditation on the Self
as a manifestation of the One.

I’ll never have to leave this comfortable planet.
We have this asset but can we sell it?
In Paradise Lost, Satan executes his plan
but God already knows all about it.
Still, whether it succeeds or fails is up to Man.
Same here, when it comes to nuclear armaments,
a distraction from the work of making life permanent.

It is all premised on the mystery
of invisible but sentient particles—
little Krshnas and Kachinas
nesting inside one another.
Meanwhile life goes on outside all around you—
WWII, the Napoleonic wars,
the Civil War which we’re still fighting.

Krshna says behead your brothers
without prejudice or justice.
So it transpires in the nuclear fire.
Whatever forever.
The poem has gone to glitten.
Teacher, teacher—tiger!

Start now knowing joy,
that’s an order,
overcome a deepening solitude.

Like a bee at a bugle
or me at the deli
on Third Avenue.

I said to Joe when do you think this weather will break?
He jokes, April.
That’s no joke. Weak creatures die and the strong barely survive.

Half a year goes by
another cancer checkup.
Cheer up. Any weather’s

better than no weather at all.
There’s always governance
even when there is no government.

My candidate drops out
after Iowa. Why do I always lose
at politics and poker?

Peace at last!
No lawnmowers, no leafblowers.
Big comfy couch.

Meditate on this: Do what has to be done.
Find your lover gazing at the moon
and take your garbage to the dump.

Your web site evaporates
and your possessions are thrown in the dumpster
except your trumpet which finds its way to a future trumpeter.

From marble and granite to steel and glass,
we were discussing Rhina Espaillat’s On the Avenue in class,
was it 1950s or 1980s NYC and were the fifties
the city’s halcyon days or is it now, the 2020s,
the boroughs teeming with immigrants
from the round earth’s imagined corners,
Hasidim and Muslim, Haitian and Russian, as we
Italians and Irish in an earlier era were. Everything will
be ok or not, the recombinations which make
prediction and intuition fortunately hopeless
and each individual an experiment gone well or wrong.
On the avenue God speaks by spewing
toy and clothing stores, breakdancers and ice skaters,
the Brooklyn Navy Yard seen from the Brooklyn Bridge,
the skyline admired when my car broke down on the Triborough Bridge.
The numbers of us overwhelm, there exist powers
overwhelming for the human body and mind.
I don’t mind but I can’t make sense of it.
Gandhi said What you do may not seem important
but it is very important that you do it. By that what is meant?
Linda said Why does God always have to be a man?
I said He could be a she but She’s probably really
a Tyrannosaurus rex. I like to be in America!

.
                              Some say the scientific method
                              Is the ultimate algorithm and others
                              Prefer prayer.

For symbolists, all intelligence can be reduced to manipulating symbols, in the same way that a mathematician solves equations by replacing expressions by other expressions. Symbolists understand that you can't learn from scratch: you need some initial knowledge to go with the data. They've figured out how to incorporate pre-existing knowledge into learning, and how to combine different pieces of knowledge on the fly in order to solve new problems. Their master algorithm is inverse deduction, which figures out what knowledge is missing in order to make a deduction go through, and then makes it as general as possible.

                              Tea
                    ­          In its simplicity
                              Can sustain concentration

For connectionists, learning is what the brain does, and so what we need to do is reverse engineer it. The brain learns by adjusting the strengths of connections between neurons, and the crucial problem is figuring out which connections are to blame for which errors and changing them accordingly. The connectionists' master algorithm is back propagation, which compares a system's outputs with the desired one and then successively changes the connections in layer after layer of neurons so as to bring the output closer to what it should be.

                              Hungry and cold
                              A holy condition
                              A warrior's position in the world
                              
Evolutionaries believe that the mother of all learning is natural selection. If it made us, it can make anything, and all we need to do is simulate it on the computer. The key problem that evolutionaries solve is learning structure: not just adjusting parameters, like back propagation does, but creating the brain that these adjustments can then fine-tune. The evolutionaries' master algorithm is genetic programming, which mates and evolves computer programs in the same way that nature mates and evolves organisms.

                              Arithmetic
            ­                  A good ****'s the metric
                              Of a dying man

Bayesians are concerned above all with uncertainty. All learned knowledge is uncertain, and learning itself is a form of uncertain inference. The problem then becomes how to deal with noisy, incomplete, and even contradictory information without falling apart. The solution is probabilistic inference, and the master algorithm is Bayes' theorem and its derivatives. Bayes' theorem tell us how to incorporate new evidence into our beliefs, and probabilistic inference algorithms do that as efficiently as possible.

                              I can't believe
                              I won't live forever, therefore,
                              I invented an afterlife to supplement reincarnation

For analogizers, the key to learning is recognizing similarities between situations and thereby inferring other similarities. If two patients have similar symptoms, perhaps they have the same disease. The key problem is judging how similar two things are. The analogizers' master algorithm is the support vector machine, which figures out which experiences to remember and how to combine them to make new predictions.

                              Prepare for a powerful anesthesia
                              Chemical processes irresistible
                              A good and perfect rest

Wherever peaches grow I go and pick 'em.
When they get ripe I try and swipe 'em.
The farmer runs out with a shotgun and wonders where's the
      varmint gone?
I'm hiding by the railroad tracks stacking the peaches I've
      found.

Then a freight train about a mile long rolls by hauling a bucket
      of rain.
I hop aboard while beautiful clouds gather to the north.
I put my peaches in the bucket and lug it to a hidden part of
      the train.
The rain begins, the night looms in, it's summer and it's
      thoughts and warm.

To the clacking rumble and the patter I close my eyes and
      dream.
An earthquake swallows up the people who wear horrible
      masks of fright as their daily tasks are trampled.
In a favorite movie theater an illumined lady puts her hand in
      mine, warm mouths, breath, skin, hair wing-soft, whole
      bodies, wind, bare.
I open my eyes at sunrise there's a steady glow of light
      around.

If you can believe in God, you can believe the mountains go
      from purple to green.
While the last partier meanders home to bed the first farmer is
      up to milk his bread.
Fruit of the world ripens audibly and cities make a silent,
      distant sound.
Lonely guy stretches, rubs his eyes, pees out a passing train,
      has a breakfast of peaches and rainwater.