My confusion comes from too much doing. During the news
eating cheese and crackers, drinking wine, thinking the world
needs me.

Or the falling leaves, the days shorter but so much brighter.
How the cloud cover of the canopy has lifted to reveal
maybe God.

The longest continuous democracy may end in another
      theocracy.
A bunch of voodooists with their hocus pocus blessings
and understandings.

Bombs and poison. Grief. Chiseled, tearless face.
Chants gregorian. Her sad, clear, soulful missives from
the city.

Unbelievable acorn crop this year! Skate on them
like marbles. Last year was a maple year. The ash crop
significant, too.

But not the cherries. Or a single pear. Blackberries
held back too. Sure the towers were a violation, but they
      came to
hold community.

One stands not apart or alone but an individual within
his or her platoon. Committed to the mission and survival of
the platoon.

Fedex leaves a package. There is or is no anthrax
in it. It is our disappointment as Americans that the world
      cannot
be trusted.

Yes, New York is the enemy and brother of Kabul. How
does one reconcile those differing communities and be a non-
violent human?

With words. Wendell Berry's words. And service such as
the secretaries of state give, leaving when one's time and work
is done.

Staying in the diatonic. Agreeing first on rules of engagement.
Then engaging. Not stopping the fight or thought or song until
      the fight
is done.

Bright and polite
kids. Deferential
squirrels. Leaders of
leaders. Each man
his own man
living with his mate.
The great and the small,
all, the state.
                       On the other hand,
you find yourself
no hawk
but stuck
in traffic. Lack of
spirit, spiritual identity,
not free or free
philosophically about
no freedom. Caught
no sign
of letting go.

One. Bo-Peep's
sure Woody
is her man, an answer
to the question why
be a toy? Buzz too
would do.
Two. The men at least
have missions
leading other toys
through risky situations
sprinkler weather
or just play,
cleaning schedule.

So it goes
not homosexual
not hetero.
Not defined
by circumstance
or genetic material.
Gone beyond
the creator
to an infinity
that contains
him and us and our
collective minds.
Question is
can it exist
without us?
Would it matter?
Yes, if
that **** squirrel
gets run over.

Organization man. In the best sense
creating the environment in which experiments
can be savored and remembered.

Then there is the world of interlocked
organizations. A world of missions and contracts
finely tuned and binding.

Is the formation of associations
as instinctual as nesting and gestation?
A leader may be one who asks a question.

Or may be one imposing order.
Imposed through consensus and broad shoulders.
Waits, watches, acts his part.

I was impressed by the list of distinguished senators
from Vermont. He placed himself among men,
orators, imperfect, in history.

We march forward, imperfect in our justice
and compassion. Overriding logic with conscience
sometimes, not often, when it counts.

And mercy. A seemingly irrational, total
abnegation of the markets, rules of war, law.
Good to be so flawed.

Vivacious, practical, self-directed
Mary Bailey, nice body
it makes no sense that just because George
might never have been she suddenly becomes a shy,
homely, lonely librarian without a dog or god.
No, it did not fundamentally matter
whether George was born except to his mother. Potter
might have taken over but why should the morality
of a whole community decline? As for the ship
going down, if a butterfly in China had fluttered
right instead of left 10,000 years ago
the tragedy would have been entirely averted
in fact the whole war would not have happened!

I pleasure in and treasure
my insignificance. If only
I could be overlooked
by the planning board and IRS.

One false note gives the lie
to the whole premise. God died
but was elected posthumously to the Senate
as for the Big Bang theory, when it
supposedly happened what surrounded that
golf ball of matter and now what
occupies the time beyond the farthest edge of space?
My wife over dinner laughs, says Face

it, you'll never know so stop asking questions.
That is how we must make music, mindful of our extreme
limits, our politics, our complete dependence on the theme
of God as feedback, bifurcation and correction.

The perfect year,
two equal halves.
One with leaves
one without.
Forest thinning out.
Bring indoors
swing sets, pools, smiles, thoughts.

Having enough and not much else is a lot.
The transfer of funds is a loving gratitude for work well done.
Not self-sufficient unless self
is defined as family, community and nation.
The world.
Universe.
Thus,

I settle my haunches like a bear content, snug into coming
      winter.
House will be warm notwithstanding the Muslim-Judeo-
      Christian condition
not to mention the Hindu-Buddhist vortex.
Searching space
for an entity
to unite us as humanity.
Carbon-based, earthbound
meeting, understanding and absorbing
the clicking, algorithmic logic
of passionately computing species, insects, machines, bacteria.

A world moves only as fast as you think.
If it moves faster you're not thinking, you're it, dead, chemicals
      redistributed
in an ever more painless process.
What are my feelings exactly?
Systemic joy.
Lovely the logic
we have invented and applied
identifying, specifying, classifying.
It can keep you busy
counting, praying
while all the leaves are falling.

The seasons inure us to loss
whether a vote of confidence
or no confidence
we are neither more nor less

in our hearts and souls. We are still
whole, history
forgets our story
but immortalizes us, nothing is annulled.

Today's board vote affects my livelihood
how and what I hunt and gather,
money, but not whether
I live or die. That's God's and luck's neighborhood.

I like capitalizing God
although I don't believe and can't imagine
an intelligence managing or wanting to manage
this interface of rock and flesh, fire and sod.

The Knowledge
tells us how to rebuild after an apocalypse,
not let the circle lapse,
to outlast the holocaust. I have no vantage

from ridges I ascend
Cercocarpus, turbinella, dry and hot
places worry, planning, thought
stop. May they inure me to my end.

In the intermediate zone between heaven and hell
opinions and complaints, after much moaning, may
come to be held in common.

The way a flock of chickadees
moves through the woods, cheerfully,
each bird taking a turn on point.

All meaning must be found, here, in the middle zone,
notwithstanding fears that rend and own us,
of dying unknown.

A Spring day
the flycatcher broke its neck against our bay window
nothing changed.

I buried it, somewhat reverently, in a shallow grave.
No differently, really, than I would a man
who'd died suddenly.

Who'd left footprints in the snow
which became wild lily-of-the-valley, running pine
then snow again in time.

After long enmity
Sally hugs me, asks if I've been happy.
A moment in a year.

February, the light is long, more direct.
It's meaningless, repetitious
but held dear.