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.

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.

Ectopic heart
beat. Acoustic
neuroma. Sleep
apnea. Getting
older blessing
against alternative.

Neither hate
nor repair.
Immediately
the woods were familiar -
bunchberry, clintonia.
Red spruce, yellow birch.

Heron rowing
northward overhead
a sign: good luck.
Or was it just
a crow. Rock thrown.
Don't know.

Life's ending.
My sons
have each other
for laughter
at their tragedies.
Avalanche, cataract.

Clean house or
run for president.
Power and talent
are bones in your feet.
Nature's the bed
you'll sleep in.

Thyroid storm.
Screech
of the long-eared
owl. Even if
portent of death,
it's welcome.

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.

What kind of day was it. Clean
the house. Notice the full moon.
Read a sheaf of old poems.
Listen to jazz tunes. Open mail.

Refuse to make of it more
than it was. What is it for,
don't ask. Squirrel or spider
your cares are yours to savor,

enjoy or fear. Tinnitus
of the ear, sinusitis
of the nose, bale contriteness
of the soul. Moriturus.

Consider economy
soul's eponymity.
The opening canopy
panoramic mystery.

Neither joyful nor depressed.
Not the worst and not the best.
I lived, as did my dentist.
To the east and west, the self.

In the debate between accessible and difficult poems
Poets' poems and poems for people
Only the single poem and private reader matter

Both kinds and anything between can matter or not
Solid or made of air, a vase or heavy clay ashtray
One word repeated or many like a lei

An acquired taste, like wine, and like wine
Not sustenance, yet men die with their miseries
Uncut without it, news and mere matter

I advise everyone to keep a personal anthology of poems
      that matter
Or not. Perhaps it should be novels. Stones, insect wings,
Feathers, Birds you've seen, People loved.

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.