To the gods, the individual won't matter.
But we've said No to that. Here, you count.

Perhaps the gods, their tornadoes and weapons of mass terror
Are stronger than us. But we can read and count

And our music is more ethereal and real
Than theirs. They must divide to conquer us

But we have realized division is a form of multiplication
And have multiplied. Now there are too many

Of us to count. But we have learned there are
More planets in the universe than people on the planet.

A planet for each one. But we would rather stay
Together, continue to discover what we're living for.

Every human, and every animal, will count. And then
We'll invite back even the gods themselves.

Certain days planned to be eventful
I look forward to for weeks, setting
and characters, and the work days march forward
toward the horrible or pleasurable
and the day comes, it comes without hesitating or hurrying
although I hurry and hesitate
and when it is here, going by
during my hesitation or hurry did I
think what I wanted to ask?

Fowl meadow grass - Glyceria striata - the striations
on the lemma. Drooping rachis
a weeping willow of a grass.

Recurring periwinkles, myrtle, Vinca.
Helicopter petals. Evergreen leaves.
Escaped from gardens, alien or native?

A little further by the spruce stand
a new mustard, cuckoo flower - Cardamine -
with pinnately compound leaves. What a find!

A good day turns bad.
After you've died, one of them dogs digs up your grave.
You may sit in the rain and think.

Maiden pink.
The dark circle inside the flower
a g-string or garter.

O to fail well. To lay low. To live long.
To run slow. Feel the hill. Pressing down.
Do less. Until one thing's done well.

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.

I like his confidence, that working the problem
will certainly result in better outcomes than guessing.
A rationalist who does not depend on a higher power
to direct his decisions, but who may concede,
observe, realize and accept that he lacks the data
or the skills or tools to interpret data and these
decisions he leaves to his god.
                                    But not before
thoroughly assessing the limits of his power. Guessing
before guessing is necessary makes things worse. The skills,
tools and experience are the accumulated wisdom
of earlier experts in his field.
                                    Yet each generation
of communicants must examine the assumptions
from which the mathematics, logic, science or law
was derived. Rebuild the proofs from the simplest
truths, laws, physics. Taking God's first and only words
and extrapolating correctly, getting the trajectory
right for successful take off and re-entry.
                                    And then
to explain the derivations to your students.
Until they too can care for the species and the planet,
making whole sentences, formulas and melodies
from few words, numbers, notes.

Engineers know
to build in redundancies
when lives depend
not necessarily exact replicas of the primary unit
but systems whose secondary function
is to carry the load when a primary system
fails.
          The principle applies
to all organisms and the inanimate
objects designed to support them.
But the sun
and the rock
that is earth
need no redundancies.
Burning, cooling
one
of each, they disintegrate
without feeling
for the mantle or the planets.

Some individuals
may, it turns out, be irreplaceable.
There is not always another girl singer
this one is the only one for us
at this time, while we're alive
in this place with the random weather.
The one singer, leader
the one who interprets God's words
when she is assassinated, terminated, released
we are not released, velocity
registers a mandatory, momentarily momentous
palpitation that is gone
unlike Shakespeare
so far. She
was not the sun.
But she was found
to be irreplaceable, unique
her song.

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 it is not a direct contribution
to destiny, yet some stories may be told
for centuries.
                         It takes constantly renewed
consciousness to persevere, retell the stories
and interpret lessons. You go, girl.