It was with almost joy
that I watched at my father's
deathbed. His struggle
to let go
of his body and thoughts
was like being at a birth.

But now I'm not so sure.
Now that I'm back
with my life.
Unlike Lear
who will never, never
see his daughter again

I feel the man's presence
in every third thought
as one who went before.
Twice that Spring he said
Rob, I'm dying
but I failed to ask my question

What is it like?
He wouldn't have been able
to say. Not
because he didn't know.
Because it's so
much like living.

November is sweet, sunshine through bare trees, dry brown
      and fungus-free leaves companionably visiting among the
      dead
as I did yesterday our town's small graveyard military dads
      who recently died lie under polished stones embossed
      with actual photos of themselves and their wives
      flowers and plastic totems within a miniature picket fence
      overflowing with the emotions love and grieving of the
      living
beside or not far from simple wafer-thin old moss-covered
      stones on which I could not read the names.
Such peace I realized which may be found around any rock or
      tree has escaped me while I pursue my particular
      happiness and our particular war,
and such a blessing awaits me, too.

1

The personal is boring
as are my ruminations on the war.
What I need to do I can't try:
wander without shelter in the backcountry.
Or go deeper into the polity,
join a committee or a party.

Minute by minute and season to season
I like my life but what does it add up to, what reason
to go on? No better than a squirrel
or a spider. Spreadsheets, fake books, girls
I want too mildly, modestly or morally to have.
Can the economy and community be called love?

You can be killed and buried in gravel
Your children can be failed at school and marched to war
You can be taxed and sent to gaol for the honor of it
And there's nothing you can do about it.
Will we find the universe not large enough to hold us?
Will planet after planet be too old for us?

If you were president, what would your program be?
What one question is the key
to another's truth. How do you spend your money?
Do you believe in a god who can see
all and understand? Or is he
unable to care, a different species.

2

We take the long view
that as individuals drop
from sight, new enthusiasts
will associate. Legs
give out, lungs collapse,
but we do not let the circle lapse.

For every Aristotle
there are a million toddlers
who will advance no memorable
theories. But the mist
on trees and mountains,
sunrise over desert, are for

every merchant, traveler.
My sons will take on cares,
which toys are theirs,
as their parents grow
older. Slowness brings us
to our goal: do one thing well.

By that what is meant?
Don't be a dilettante.
Not having found the greatness
of a single, clear description,
definition, the greatness comes in
doing everyday what's known.

As a boy, I'd find my father
sitting in the pitch dark living room,
cigarette aglow, as I'd pass
from my bed to the bathroom.

Did the boy consider, at that late hour,
what plans or fears occupied the man?
Not at all, nor did the man share
with the passing boy what he thought.

Now he's gone. Back from that ****
and many another, I can well imagine
the mystery I must be to my son.
Has much changed but the date and where the man fought?

Most men, most times, abide in peace,
leastwise not always angry or afraid
they cannot save their children from the gas
or the abyss about which God lied.

Yet, when the boy dreams through the room
in the movement of his body there's a sleepiness
to make the man weep for himself, his father
and the boy who comes to the darkness unafraid.

Faulkner's comment, I imagine him
tossing it off like Yogi Berra between games
of a doubleheader. The hero, the expert, the virtuoso
has no real control, is going to feel
unmitigated, unsparing forces, a mighty sun
swallowed by a black hole, coughed up into a big sky.
The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.

Versus Wayne Gretsky's formulation.
When I think of my death, I think of returning
the chemicals and microorganisms I borrowed.
If my plane goes down, when we hit the ground
fruits with names will be waiting - squawbush if
in the desert uplands, rose hips on a Vermont farm.
The past is skating to where the puck will be.

I realize I have a religion, a science fiction
the size of Jupiter which is, as these things go, small:
Chardin's theory unifying physical matter, rocks
and all sentient beings into one - here's the catch -
conscious organism. Having said that, why not claim
the same for the entire universe? Rock + DNA = soil.
The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.

These trees cannot feed me.
Self-sufficiency is relevant only in context of community,
      economy.
Every drug, every vitamin is wrung from plants,
tools and shelter are ore.
A tincture, infusion, decoction, a ******, a compress,
      poultice, a salve, a syrup.
A war president needs war.
The past is skating to where the puck will be.

5 a.m., first of Spring.
Robins still in flocks, not paired off. But crows
mating on the sky - two couples dating
a sign of luck, that Celtic god passing Peter talked about.
8,000 generations, I reach only to my grandparents
but history and the naming of things extend our vision.
The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.

I was handcuffed but not beaten. Humiliated but not insulted.
And when I came before the judge, he was uninterested
in vengeance or restitution. He had his own death before him,
probably. I keep wanting to go back
to before the big bang, reading books about the cosmos,
FLO, LUCA, the texture of reality, consciousness,
      God-seeking.
The past is skating to where the puck will be.

For the next 5-10 years my goals are: geographically
compact and contiguous Congressional districts, term limits
for Federal legislators and judges, election of the president
by direct popular vote, public financing, spending limits and
      free
air time for candidates, abolish UN vetoes, consent of the
      governed
before governments can sit in global councils.
The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.

No greater tragedy than the death of your children.
Yet you live on, eyes drained of color. Old,
you make plans. To know the names of every flower
in the temperate zone. Every bird by its song.
Just as you're about to reach your goal, a tipping point
comes along: a nuclear detonation or it gets too cold.
The past is skating to where the puck will be.

In Ulzana's Raid,
the Native- and European-American concepts of property
      ownership and rights
are incompatible and irresolvable. McIntosh
had no illusions about that. He said hating Apaches for killing
      whites
is like hating the desert for having no water.
I suspect the movie's not a good source of anthropological
      data
and overlooks the commonalities among human communities
to focus on just a few bold characters
as all art must.

I consider McIntosh fortunate
to have died commensurate with the way he lived his life,
rolling a final cigarette, nothing between him and the desert,
and no gravediggers waiting, jesting, defecating. Also,
he is lucky to have had one last, dispassionate friend
to whom there is nothing left to say, the Chiracahua tracher
Kah-ti-nay.

Last night's performance of Beauty and the Beast
may have been the most victorious, ecstatic, cohesive
moment in our little school's history. Emily was Beauty, a
      filament of energy
who doesn't like to be touched and has been known to punch
boys hard. She had memorized her lines until she was hardly
Emily but only Beauty in a blue dress unselfconsciously
hiking up her tights between the Beast's advances.
Is this done in every American town and the world
over so there's no need to feel lost or lonely
ever?

There is no context for a man
outside the platoon or raiding party, home or shop.
When violence comes to the neighborhood,
the hierarchy of communicants will hold or fold
it is then the peace work proves relevant. I noticed McIntosh,
grizzled as he was, accepted the given hierarchy, a raw
      lieutenant's orders,
as he did the desert and Apaches, with a shrug and
      foreknowledge
of the outcome. If there's anywhere with no Emily or Beauty
we should bring them such blessings at the point of a
gun. But there is no place without Emily, not
the least-known prison in deepest space as long
as we do not hate or hurt or shun
the Beast.

On last night's news I heard
of an engineer named K_ who
invented the microchip and changed
our lives. How the chip now contains
a billion circuits which I still don't get
but what I do perceive is this engineer's
(a man modest in pride, fame and wealth)
achievement of Teilhard de Chardin's vision
of a world that is one organism and a single-
minded mankind.
                                 Also mentioned
were Edison, the Wrights and Ford,
oddly not Einstein, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton,
Hamilton or Jefferson, Christ or Buddha,
or the unknown gatherers and traders
who invented agriculture, money.
8,000 generations and each individual
an experiment gone well or wrong, a chance
to respond with love or grief to the universe's effort
to extinguish us.

Family of weasels, young ones playful.
One reference says they're vicious murderers,
killing for sport. Absurd, I think, in the wild.
Another clarifies they eat ½ their body weight daily,
extremely active, high metabolism, hunt all their caloric needs
before eating. And, like the raccoon, ferocious defenders
of their young.