Herpetologist meets actress (Cameron Diaz).
If he's funny he's me.
South America or Africa (on location).
In a diamond mind.
The protagonists (lovers), the diamonds, the miners and the minders.
By minders we mean watchers, organizers, supervisors.
As all art must: choose a focus.
The personal is political said Cameron on the night bus to Quebec.
I had never met a girl so willing to make love in public.

To what extent is violence necessary? And
is that the essential question or
should violence be accepted as man's state, fate
a more essential question existing beyond or below
peace or war. Perhaps
the religious and (for the irreligious) sacred injunction
against egregious violence exists
to still ourselves
to open ourselves
to the deeper question. That Cameron Diaz is funny and beautiful
is hopeful. And the telescope and microscope have extended
the eye's appreciation. Under the microscope
Cameron becomes a collection of foreign, alien, uncompassionate,
      selfish, self-organizing
organisms. Frightening, inexorable, fascinating
to the scientist in you!

To the telescope
vanishingly small, infinitesimal as the farthest sun
only smaller
smaller by magnitudes of magnitudes of ten
and incinerated in a nanosecond. Gone
from the movie (photographs the contents of which move
for the naked eye).
I cannot help what I do or hope.

Anyway, it's a love story
or science project, socio-political documentary. An essay.
An essay about how it is actually impossible to say what you mean
but it is possible with a lifetime of meditation and study to shut up
and know what you meant.

Now I'm deaf.
I can see Cameron Diaz but not hear her.
The guy, the herpetologist, at first colorless turns out to be
colorful as a bird or snake!
He knows a lot about snakes, and birds! Not only how they mate
but what they eat
(amateur botanist)
where they rest
what they do with their pain. Do they get depressed?
Can they have guests?
How do they judiciously employ violence to organize and defend
the nest.

The international collective remains insufficiently organized
resulting in violence and threats of violence that interrupt
commerce, procreation (love) and the pursuit of happiness (Cameron
      Diaz)
at least for certain populations, sometimes.
Otherwise, most men, most times, live in peace excepting
flood or fire God or man may
choose to impose.
I lay in my bed and listen naked.
Have a good day (Diaz).
The goddess does not exist, except as bone.

Around this time (July)
the queen yellow jacket (redcoat) searches
blind and deaf
for a ledge or cavity to build a city of her descendants
safe, that they can defend.
Most cities
prosper, undisturbed
and sleeping peacefully, overwinter. We, however,
remain active, Cameron Diaz makes winter movies or
love stories in South America, and I
delight to imagine her herpetologist. Or one who
discovers the sun
around which a habitable, understandable, compatible
orb orbs. Or
maybe the movie's about the revolution, soldiers dying defending
this dictator or that dreamer
and the movie completely failing, not even trying, to explain how
the sons and daughters of the dying soldiers (miners) feel
fishing alone, hunting for wisdom, thereafter.
Sure, these men chose violence, not Cameron Diaz, and were not
farmers, botanists or herpetologists
their tools could have been and should have been the telescope or
      microscope
but are there enough microscopes and telescopes to go around
and did we not (taxpayers, moviegoers) encourage them to
defend Cameron Diaz?

Man's world is insufficiently organized to preclude violence
in allocating resources (Cameron Diaz).
When we invade Iraq
to defend our allies and interests
with rockets and rocket throwers, Rockettes and Cameron Diaz
each man (each Diaz) must make his
own individual choice
whether this war
is worth fighting for or the next or the worst.
Go to jail, go directly to waterboard, at the hands of
your local police, chamber of commerce.
Learn how to walk the desert and the universe.
The names of rocks and planets,
that being the only answer to the hyperorganization that is a cancer on
      our insufficient organization.

I was reading Foreign Affairs
The Case Against the West by Kishore Mabubami (Cameron Diaz).
How can I relinquish my privileged position
sit still, lie naked
until what constitutes consent of the governed and non-violent change,
      Cameron Diaz,
to her herpetologist
is known.

I cultivated at least two enemies yesterday
the enemies I wanted
I wanted them to be angry instead of me
my attitude being I don't care I'll do as I please

Please is a word we're trying to teach our sons to use
when they use services or receive gifts courtesy is required
it requires a show of gratitude and recognition for the effort others make
in making their love felt and known

Knowing how to say yes when you mean yes and no when you don't
and doing it without hurting the feelings of others
is another chickadee skill along with watching your partner's back
holding back negativity and expressing joy

I'm joyous making friends and enemies
enemies these days are my only friends, no one lives to hurt us
who hurts so much from something done or said
they'd say our demise gave great satisfaction

O to be great with enemies satisfied
and want something done
to hurt and be angry
and love more than one friend!

Standing at back of cafeteria during youth basketball awards
      ceremony
This is my community.
"What you do may not seem important but it is very important
      that you do it."

The men and women bringing the boys and girls a step to
      wisdom.
Win or lose, play your best and treat your opponent with
      respect.
Maybe the school principal can explain the ultimate mystery?

The women cannot be this chaste! The men so committed to
      non-violence!
What is the board president alone in her bedroom.
Coach Strong and his blowsy frowsy wife?

They put much emotion and gratification aside to get things
      done. Done for their sons and done for their daughters.
Visit the web site! Buy a raffle ticket! Belong to the loved
      ones!
I follow distantly. I watch warily. I have not been asked to
      lead or lift a load.

Sitting in a chair in a corner of a room at the top of a house
      near the end of a street on the edge of a city at the mouth
      of a river,
Estuary of ocean, ocean of atmosphere, pierced by a meteor
      bringing ore and organisms, incinerating elements and
      rototilling ecosystems,
Everything changes but consciousness.

The kids of course are perfect as animals in habitats.
In light of these basketball certificates, team spirits,
Time, our moment, is indeed "the mercy of eternity."

Full of courage, winter,
geese fly north. The car
almost wouldn't start.

Drive along the Mohawk
flood plain. Cattails, grasses,
no doubt ash and elm.

Restful tans and browns.
Flat, low, but still city.
Arrive at the interview.

Corner of State and Clinton,
luminous blue corporate logo
between empty store fronts.

That they might not offer me the job
and they might, make me equally sad.
Fly in formation, life for pay.

Young, my boast had been
distances and heights traveled. Now
any road serves well

as the long narrow road to the north.
The cold, quiet solitude of that road
would serve well too.

The story of Sally, the story of John.
It takes an advanced, healthy economy
to produce science and technology

but aborigines may track animals
and draw symbols in the sand, give
each cloud and bird and tree a personal

secret name. And explain according
to a logic for which we need equations
how geese in winter flow north today.

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 woke up Saturday joyful at my body's triumph
over virus, breathing again without pain and enjoying
winter and the cold that keeps us sane and sober.
But by Sunday my mortality had returned.

If I pass away now, how to assess my days.
Is balancing income and expenditure reports enough?
Our marriage and our piece of land. Dependent
on economy. For food delivery and machine repair.

In my youth, I imagined crossing mountains
to the sea, living off the land. Enduring weather patiently.
It's impossible except three days or three weeks,
with a load of supermarket food on your back.

So I accept home gratefully. And a niche in society.
We could explore these hollows and hills on foot
but my wife is weak and I am lazy. We use the library
to travel inner space. We found this place.

Next spring, a garden. Dig depleted soil behind
garage and fertilize it from our compost pile.
Learn the names and ways of cultivars, their relations
to wild plants and the edge. Finally know the fern and sedge.

Lazy one, life is short. You have never fought, to yourself
you remain unknown. You go the way of an unknown
soldier. Unable to assess the purpose of the battle.
Nameless, hungry, same as the neighbor's cow.

Be happy, slap happy. Within your generation, surrounded
by history. Seeking mastery through practice.
Rewarded with the sunrise, sunset. Yet to have delivered
on the promise expected by the parents of the baby.

Dad's bark is worse than his verse.
When he hits it doesn't really hurt.

The dirt outside the house is soil.
The mouse inside the house is life.

Can't escape the printer or the car, IV
bag, heart monitor, a billion trillion stars.

Snow descends, each flake unique.
My sons' friends, each infinitely

a Greek or Trojan hero. Our morals:
hit not the girls, nor ****. Love more

than you are loved, by a little. Give
but stop before it hurts. Stand together

or fall apart. Which candidate you vote
for less important than to vote. Don't

depend or dote on leaders, housekeeper
and president are gods equally

remote. The human body is a thing of
bone, a strange upright animal, and the

telephone a mystery to other animals.
Everyone and everything is spinning

electrons and the space between.
A great crunch, inverse of big bang,

yr big sister told.