I have no clue what Krshna taught Arjuna
but I like the name Atman a lot.
Atman. Atman. Where a man is at.
At all times. No matter what.
Gita, get in the action, gorgeous girl,
god is the answer, keep the meter.

Wisdom, none.
What Krshna tells Arjuna makes no sense.
I prefer mathematics.
Knowledge of how things are made and done
more than meditation on the Self
as a manifestation of the One.

I’ll never have to leave this comfortable planet.
We have this asset but can we sell it?
In Paradise Lost, Satan executes his plan
but God already knows all about it.
Still, whether it succeeds or fails is up to Man.
Same here, when it comes to nuclear armaments,
a distraction from the work of making life permanent.

It is all premised on the mystery
of invisible but sentient particles—
little Krshnas and Kachinas
nesting inside one another.
Meanwhile life goes on outside all around you—
WWII, the Napoleonic wars,
the Civil War which we’re still fighting.

Krshna says behead your brothers
without prejudice or justice.
So it transpires in the nuclear fire.
Whatever forever.
The poem has gone to glitten.
Teacher, teacher—tiger!

.
                              Some say the scientific method
                              Is the ultimate algorithm and others
                              Prefer prayer.

For symbolists, all intelligence can be reduced to manipulating symbols, in the same way that a mathematician solves equations by replacing expressions by other expressions. Symbolists understand that you can't learn from scratch: you need some initial knowledge to go with the data. They've figured out how to incorporate pre-existing knowledge into learning, and how to combine different pieces of knowledge on the fly in order to solve new problems. Their master algorithm is inverse deduction, which figures out what knowledge is missing in order to make a deduction go through, and then makes it as general as possible.

                              Tea
                    ­          In its simplicity
                              Can sustain concentration

For connectionists, learning is what the brain does, and so what we need to do is reverse engineer it. The brain learns by adjusting the strengths of connections between neurons, and the crucial problem is figuring out which connections are to blame for which errors and changing them accordingly. The connectionists' master algorithm is back propagation, which compares a system's outputs with the desired one and then successively changes the connections in layer after layer of neurons so as to bring the output closer to what it should be.

                              Hungry and cold
                              A holy condition
                              A warrior's position in the world
                              
Evolutionaries believe that the mother of all learning is natural selection. If it made us, it can make anything, and all we need to do is simulate it on the computer. The key problem that evolutionaries solve is learning structure: not just adjusting parameters, like back propagation does, but creating the brain that these adjustments can then fine-tune. The evolutionaries' master algorithm is genetic programming, which mates and evolves computer programs in the same way that nature mates and evolves organisms.

                              Arithmetic
            ­                  A good ****'s the metric
                              Of a dying man

Bayesians are concerned above all with uncertainty. All learned knowledge is uncertain, and learning itself is a form of uncertain inference. The problem then becomes how to deal with noisy, incomplete, and even contradictory information without falling apart. The solution is probabilistic inference, and the master algorithm is Bayes' theorem and its derivatives. Bayes' theorem tell us how to incorporate new evidence into our beliefs, and probabilistic inference algorithms do that as efficiently as possible.

                              I can't believe
                              I won't live forever, therefore,
                              I invented an afterlife to supplement reincarnation

For analogizers, the key to learning is recognizing similarities between situations and thereby inferring other similarities. If two patients have similar symptoms, perhaps they have the same disease. The key problem is judging how similar two things are. The analogizers' master algorithm is the support vector machine, which figures out which experiences to remember and how to combine them to make new predictions.

                              Prepare for a powerful anesthesia
                              Chemical processes irresistible
                              A good and perfect rest

I’ve written enough small poetry
to start a nuclear war.
Do you want to die in traffic
behind the wheel of your car? Or in yr rodeer camp next fall.

Control eludes us. The hero
loses urinary control, the unified nation
loses missile control, lost my timepiece, lost my metronome,
now my music is ethereal as an archangel’s.

No owl hoots or duck quacks
or squirrels *******
or spiders spanning rampikes.
The floccinaucinihilipilification of nature.

No greater tragedy than a tipping
point that tests the hero’s gullibility, complicity,
self-control, comity, sense of humor
which is the only remedy not to hate those in authority.

Them guys with guns at the Michigan state house,
fat bearded tattooed ******* white bros.
Norsemen, Crusaders, Vikings, Britons.
For despair there is no forgiveness. Peace out.

Nuclear mischief, mad Man’s most incandescent bloom
and the devil who exists to carry the load
when we misbehave and fight among ourselves.
I wake up to my skin boiling off my bones.

Humor is the only remedy, or is ardor the best way forward.
We’ll see how things work out in the next generation.
The same diverse, spoiled, unpatriotic revolutionaries as at the nation’s
      beginning
trying to reverse the future, making phone calls to get out the vote in
      Georgia, hating the desert for having no water.

Events keep piling up,
the future depends on ourselves.
Conflict is inevitable and in this conflict power must be challenged by
      power
so err on the side of patience, perseverance and impermanence.

Aspen, ponderosa pine, blue spruce
pink glacier-cut rock, scree, ravens
gray jay, peregrine falcon, hawk.

We climb to 11,000 feet in three days,
camp at Lawn Lake for three days. Alpine
tundra. Elk, bighorn sheep, marmot.

Tileston Meadows, ticks in grass,
rock face of Mummy Mountain.
Binoculars show pink cracks in gray rock.

Stoke gas stoves, play cards.
Boil water, set up tarps, lay out
sleeping bags, hang bear bag.

Watch crescent moon slice into
Fairchild Mountain. Moonlight
makes a mosque of the rocks.

Yellow aspen splash in dark green
spruce and pine. Gullies where streams
slash during spring snowmelt.

One rock, feather or flower worth
more than money. Need no wallet,
keys. Just clothes for fur.

All day climb toward saddle to see
what's on other side. One hawk floating
among bare peaks and over valleys.

Wind at 13,000 feet
turns to sleet. Turn back from peak,
take boulders two at a time down.

Winter moves into mountains.
Then we fly from Denver to New York
where it's still summer.

Spring peepers
stop peeping. A satellite
crosses sky. One peeper keeps peeping
in time to the satellite blinking, an eye.
Deep thinking.

The Grand Canyon is like the brain
with deep, unexplored fissures and tributaries,
the main route well known by now.

I am walking, walking inside my mind,
a grand canyon, a planet of canyons, a system
of planets. The exploration may become dangerous

I might lose my job, forgetting to go or losing
sight of its importance. But the job is gathering
pinyon nuts and saguaro fruits, it is the main

river, deepest cavity, how I find the unexplored
canyons and tributaries of my neighbors
and my enemies. But is it a religion,

a reason for living. It is a marriage, for better
or worse, with all the other living. The concept
of life's brevity, temporary compared

with the time taken to carve the canyon, does
not interest me. Each moment has a weather,
is a mirror of all other moments. The naming

of things goes on. Cliff rose and wavyleaf oak,
new mexican locust and sagebrush among ponderosa
and pinyon pine, juniper. Once I know

who they are inhabiting the canyon, the raven's
flight is meaningful. The raven's rock cave,
search for seed and carrion, my home and job.

There are 12 types of joy:
simple joy
almost joy
systemic joy
Saturday joy
expressing joy
knowing joy
all joy
max joy
constant inputs of joy
single greatest joy
sacrifice or joy
the face of joy
at the periapsis of earth’s orbit.

**** Burton examining Liz Taylor's ****** sphincter for blood.
      That's love.
            ****** love. Pornographic, anthropological, primate love.

                           --------------------------------------

Newton wrote the Principia
      So only serious mathematicians would comprehend.
            "I've been faking my way through life," he lied.

                           --------------------------------------

They say the white pine whispers
      What the wind can't say.
            In the blowdown there's a slow ballet.

                           --------------------------------------

I am a citizen of the empire.
      Moonlight & heartbeat.
            Zach's feet stink.

                           --------------------------------------

One hawk.
      Flying low, scaring crows.
            No snow.

                           --------------------------------------

Watres pipyng hoot.
      First, entertain. Then expectorate (spit).
            Lapdancer, spiderweb.

                           --------------------------------------

Summer morning, rabbit in my garden.
      Let it be or send a warning.
            Let the rabbit eat my peas.

                           --------------------------------------

Avoid the I,
      Avoid yourself, and enter the void?
            I think not.

Yr cancer is inevitable as love.
You didn't last forever. The pain
wasn't the main problem, unconsciousness
was. Dad cannot see or hear,
the walls of the house contain just dust,
that's it, and if he shows up as a ghost
I'm lost, all my theories false.

Dr. Cherry certified my cancer as a cyst.
A drupe, a stone, a past mistake.
I left the examining room elated,
and have gone on to conflate my happiness,
relief, with that of the whole village.
The message is: to the east and west, the self
which is carried around as a pound of garbage.

"I like to be kissed before I'm ******."
And what is poetry anyway. Its role,
local and global. Well, I for one have no
friends or family sufficiently interested
to come to a reading. Don't take offense,
we prefer novels, and especially movies,

coffee, sugar, oil, parrots, ponies, you
name it. Seven goes to six. Prices
bust and burst, but life (and school) goes
on, or whatnot. Atomic bubble gum. Protein computer.
Grass roof. Sun spot. Perfect error.
In the mirror where everybody hides the body.

Finally, I have been going for walks, girls
with protection dogs, black flies in my eyes.
Peace of noon, bird siesta. August returns,
the snow flies. Did you survive summer,
beat the reaper? I hope so, and yr fern allies.
Perfect rest is priceless, paradise.

Cold, a killing cold
is the best defense against aliens. And viruses, bacteria
are our friends.

Perfect rest, perfect motion.
Another autumn, another election.
So aimless and sublime.

Back and forth, forth and back.
Rock and roll, spoon and bowl.
What a symmetry, calculus, trigonometry.

Measurements reduce violence.
Makes sense. Temperature measures change. Time's irreversible.
Change is all that's visible.

Learn the changes, then forget them.
Lost my timepiece, lost my metronome
now my music is ethereal.

Ethereal or dissonant,
the clash that brings you home from winter and starvation's wisdom.
"Unit, corps, God, country!"

It takes some courage to eat a legume's fruit
knowing what is known of each poisonous part
of the locust (although the flowers may be frittered).

What's pushing up through the leaf litter
before the canopy is out, past the stone fence?
Wild lily-of-the-valley is my guess.

Of 140,000 soldiers, less than 1% have considered
the fruit of the desert surprisingly good and varied.
They have stayed and married women who are crows.

My own land is a land of wetlands but we too
have crows. We have waited and waited for this election
and now we're divided into just two factions.

If everyone votes and every vote's counted there will be
nothing for either faction to crow about. All will be
well with the republic and in the world what will be will be.

What responsibility does a citizen bear
for participating in a war, blowing the roofs
off houses, exposing the beds and clean-swept floors?

Warriors at the gate, you will not run,
you will not bargain. Dig in deep, feet
overhanging the abyss, protect your children.

I poured water into the dry vase of garden cultivars -
snapdragon, phlox, bigonia, bluebell, mint -
and have they not rewarded me with their collective scent?

One leaf falls
holographic illusion
across time the Terminator travels
to shape Sarah Connors' destiny.
Heart attack
a common enough destiny
as common as young men discussing girls' ****.
The Constitution
is the document we refer to, the lodestone
to correct course and not go crazily astray.
Lose all purpose beyond ******, child *** and food hording.
Illuminated manuscripts
in a dark age, tape decks remind us of our voice
our communal voice
Supremes and Fred Astaire
the silken wail.

I lie alone in the night
its sensuality makes the best sense
it does or does not clarify the day
of classes or clients or chain saws
whatever fever may have infected me at the moment
a fever to achieve access to foreign films while living in the
      mountain community of Schroon Lake
the fever to instruct the American people how to apply ideals
      and practicalities of Constitution to international
      relationships
the fever not to die today, to maintain consciousness just one
      more season (and one more after that).

Anyway, what is being discussed -
the finiteness of one life -
or perhaps existence continues in another dimension, on
      another frequency
no owl hoots
but other purpler and indigo occurrences
with other purposes
as incomprehensible and wonderful as these purposes
to choke on a cherry pit or nuclear bomb
to wail our wail together
each individual identifiable hoot and wail, loud laugh and
      suppressed scream
one orbicular chant, humanity, from India to Indiana
complete, one sing.

I feel this way
searching for my place among you
childless, but a child among children
obeying or not obeying the speed limit
as my hormones permit
everywhere among brothers, the sisters among sisters
the races together exterminating the last rhinoceros and
      preserving its genes at the zoological society
my species attacking entire rain forests, temperate forests
      and boreal forests
like the engraver beetle in the red pine's inner bark.
Thus, I occasionally cheer the Terminator
cheer the machine and neutron bomb
even in the face of individual heroics, the male and female face
their physical love, tender and violent
I don't know what I want.

It could be simple
as this headache.
Not to despair
just to care enough to think clearly and accept 10,000 years
      of history.
Not to hate those in authority
humor is the only remedy
yellow ape teeth chimping in the glass death face
and ritual is remedy
a death song
and one for planting
and one for the beginning of loving.

In a strong marriage, a long marriage
much cannot be said, should not be said.
The spots on one's skin will be wisely ignored.
Differences of opinion are tolerated, not debated.

Your memories may disappoint your partner
as not those she has selected, refracted.
Over dinner for two at the Mill on the Floss
it could be dangerous to compare wills, losses.

Or it might result in belly laughs, Shakespearean
revelations, the night he got us lost in the woods
or she peed her pants at a party. The marriage was Faustian,
in a good way, like going to a job in the Garden of Eden.

Having survived 25 years, knowing 50's impossible,
what else do we know? Raised 2 boys, painted 3 houses.

I'm dead. Unlike Frost and Yeats
nothing I've said will be remembered.
Unlike Roosevelt and Lincoln
nothing I'm thinking will win the war.

I'm going to go to my grave unsung
like almost everyone. These mountains
are my grave. A good grave
to go to. There's no such thing

as being saved. When you're gone
you're done. At least 60 million
people don't believe it, don't believe
in evolution. Man, that ape,

can heap a peck of hurt posthaste
with earth movers and machine guns.
Information technology
cannot save your soul, heck,

I've tried. Every morning
I total the polloi
coming to my site for wisdom.
The number's usually zero.

A good number to know.
When my heart fibrillates
I lay my head
against my sleeping wife.

Solace, comfort. She says,
Take your pill, fool.
In an hour at most
I'm feeling great again!

Quiet, dawn, Covid.
Biggest accomplishment yesterday: buying toilet paper.
Thanking the young cashier for doing her job.
Feeling a little sick, wearing my mask and gloves,
Spring oblivious to the virus, an idiot like Millay said.
At least we’re not beheading each other—yet.

Symptoms mild so far. Today rest,
no long walk, no knee bends.
I think I’ve watched every possible movie and tv show
and nothing’s left that doesn’t bore me.
I could learn the calculus, chemistry or physics
but will I and what for?

Most poetry is chopped up prose. That’s harsh
but true. But that’s because most days
are prose or yesterday’s news. Win or lose
sumthins gonna getcha. Drug cartel assassin, the blues.
If not now, when? Some other Wednesday. Why wait?
I wish I had some wisdom to translate.

It’s living and helping others to live
that counts, I guess. Cast a cold eye and guess,
walk the extra mile, report from the besieged city, be wise or a ****.
I hope to get the antibodies the easy way,
mild symptoms, no brush with death, don’t intubate.
An existential bessemer process, strange quark,

chances are I won’t be able to organize this day into an expressible state.
A daily exchange with nature’s enough
to alleviate my fear.
When I thanked the cashier
her smile was like the sun coming out from behind clouds
or the end of the pandemic, as if I had not wasted my life.

It's already hard enough to say anything accurately
without further obfuscating and camouflaging the soul.
The faces in the funeral pews are impassive, impatient
and the dead woman cares not what's said, isn't even present.

The poet gets innumerable do-overs, it's one of man's wonders,
revises his vision of his mother and plays her piano, posthumously.
Why not say it simply? Hers was a comity and a tragedy.
As are ours. And perform the history that surrounds us.

Are caskets boats? The ship of death rides Charon's waves
or perhaps on that solitary day you happily kayak to the huckleberries.
Is the deeper sadness incomplete achievement or never to have tried?
Any attempt to decide this question for others is to badly behave.

The pablum of Christianity, esp. the Catholics, re the after life
must be rejected. It's necessary. To be replaced by community,
perfection of the human project, nature's intelligent partner.
Dusty, sadly habitable houses along the funeral route, shapeless

people crossing themselves when ambulances or hearses pass.
I wanted to describe the sweetness of her life, how she was part
of the problem and part of the solution. How love and evolution
are passed like loaves from person to person down the generations.

Find the humor in the cholera. When my father died
he waved like a surfer riding a wave or a clown riding
an elephant out the circus tent. Mom follows the same law.
The many ways a spear can pierce a warrior's jawbone or armor.

Start the day. In what way
was the cold spring, last wet summer a
global warning, indicator. Says

one commentator on the op-ed page, the
dislocations, wars, famines will tax humanity's
technology, philosophy, even religion's ability

to see past daily survival to
the music in the rock. I've doubted the taboos
one frog among many in the slow-heating beauty

of the world we knew. Aaron's coconut.
Peepers peeping in the heavy rains, wet
with joy. Hawks and crows thrive below the jet

stream, noise, perhaps our fears
are overdrawn, we'll get along, it'll all hold together 10,000 years more,
the Holocaust will never be repeated, lush mountain and sere

desert equally appreciated, baseball
lazily paced summer evenings, the harvest in the fall
a sure thing, and the dying back a blessing come to all.

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.

It's only a paper-mache
moon, they say, too cool,
too full of interstellar space
to sympathize or stress about
lovers, kings and fools.

Or is it? According to Deutsch
the so-called final ignition
into outer space
is a product of man's meditations
moving, as if via gravitation

the magician to the other end
of the expanding universe. Sure,
in yr computer. Meanwhile, nursed
in a nursing home, mewling and peeing
as accurately predicted by Shakespeare

my old Marine, an ex-sailor, bitter
at life's ending, waited
too long to dispatch with dignity.
All alone, as in Corbiere's poem,
old soldiers are fated

to fight unnecessary wars
as we all are. Except for the fact that
every helium and hydrogen atom
ever born or made (whatever you believe)
has taken positions, passionate

and predetermined as republicans and dobermans
over eons and epochs. Thus
I don't think it behooves us much to care
if we're getting too little clean air or
bacteria are better adapted than us. This

obsession with identity, survival
a name and a leg of lamb is lame
even uninspired. The entire universe
including the professional baseball season
is canceled when yr dead. No blame.

At dinner, Zach asks
about our nation's history, wars.
I say We're taking on everyone, one at a time.

First Britain, then Britain again: "He was the surly English pluck, and
      there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be."
Next Mexico: "Death is indifferent to what hide he tans; life crushes
      men like flies."
The War Between the States: "Well done, Mr. Cromartie. Time now
      for rest."

Most of Latin America: "Not only humans longed for liberation. All
      ecology groaned for it too. The revolution is also one of lakes,
      rivers, trees, animals."
Then Southeast Asia: "The slight bump the mortars make as they kiss
      the tube goodbye. Then the furious rain, a fist driving home the
      message: Boy, you don't belong here."
Now the Middle East: "A land to be admired like all lands. Harsh
      mountains and deserts, indigenous plants and people, adapted
      ungulates, carnivorous mammals."

Can't forget the Krauts & Nips: "Then I heard the bomber call me in:
      Little Friend, Little Friend, I got two engines on fire. Can you see
      me, Little Friend?"
Nor the Commies: "You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the
      beginning of a new one. I put this book here for you, who once
      lived, so that you should visit us no more."
The original indigenous people say: "In time we'll become prosperous,
      or else we'll become martyrs. The force that placed us here cannot
      be trusted."

Imperfect world, purposeless person.
I retired to pursue perfection
learn jazz tunes, woody and herbaceous plants,
read every inch of English literature,

Scientific American and Foreign Affairs,
have an affair with an American.
Oh, and by the way, before you ask, I'm from Mars.
Orbiting your planet, admiring the girls.

Paraphrasing prayers by George Herbert to share
with Jesus believers on talk radio shows
where we try to bring your lives into expressible states
before it’s too late and climate change inundates you.

Reversed thunder, savior-side-piercing spear,
one day you’re feeling fine, the next not.
We’re pretty matter of fact, clear about
the fact of death. Once you’re gone most of us forget

your face and previous accomplishments. The place
you lived is repopulated with the next generation (of aliens)
and that ought to be a comfort, a sort of restful
certainty all is well, nothing special need be done.

Bluebirds are back, crows are mating on the sky
and chasing hawks away from their nests. Juncos
and sparrows glean together. I hear pileated woodpeckers
jackhammering and barred owls hooting soothingly.

Herons smoothing feathers and spearing fish.
Everything is as one would wish.
Numberless are the world's wonders
but none more wonderful than aliens.

Policy or personal
questions? In the poem Two White Wines
a child adopted from Cambodia
is a thing of beauty, and so she is
as she showed herself to be yesterday. Lovely. However
the poet implies market, i.e. economic, forces brought her
      to America
when, as her parents know, it was war,
the sad Vietnam War or the War with America
as I think the Vietnamese remember it.

Honor and bravery
equal courage. Reed Whittemore's poem about
a photo of Viet Cong prisoners, stoic, defiant
under an American officer's boot
expresses admiration for the enemy. Then and now
a dangerous sentiment. Your fellow citizens, denizens
of convenience stores, even your family,
may come to see you as the enemy. Once ostracized,
      the other,
not belonging to the loved ones, you're not long for
this world of dew.

**** and ***
Ken says, describes America's culture, not its poets
or jazz. What's worth fighting for?
Your land, your right to be stupid on your land.
Now there is one large land, one people
and many. The vote is a crude, monosyllabic grunt,
no way to express the subtle degrees of experience
our long lives represent. Thus,
it is good, when the family gathers, to talk,
each person speak
of what has been forgotten, forgiven and forgone.

Trading or taking
every family must be tithed or taxed.
Every man who finds his meaning in war
will be pained into wisdom and gentleness.
Who comes home
comes home to a future that bypassed the fighting, or did it?
The oil must be sold,
even Saddam or Osama cannot withhold it.
You can drink your quota of water
and still your heart can ache.

Empire or democracy
of nations? We can choose to be the reigning kings
between the last empire and the next
or we can implement a vision
of collective deliberation.
America the seeing-eye dog,
not America the junkyard dog.
Going question by question
toward predictable, transparent governance.
Example: How can a people become a nation
without resorting to violence or incurring violent reaction?

5th Ave. was shoulder to shoulder with
hungry lunch-seeking business men
and women. Ricardo unpacked
his horn nervously and a foot cymbal.
Spring, early street season, too cold
for most musicians but he needed money.
His lips kissed the cold metal mouthpiece.

Carrying the saw and the pulaski.
Cutting brush for a fire line high up,
where raptors and ravens fly. No sound
but wind if you could subtract the crew
working and *****, joking during lunch.
A good year it had been sitting in the soil
feeling Ricardo's body on the mountainside.
Mountains moving as good a feeling.

Alone in his town, most neighbors at work,
housecleaning done, Ricardo settled down
with pen to write and ate lunch.
People = chickadees.
Clutch size, substrate, territory, gestation period.
Mating rituals. Use of alcohol and hallucinogens.
Forms of cancer, heart disease. Burial rites, memories.
Creation myths, beliefs for which there is no evidence.
Range: tundra to tropics.

In last night's movie, a young writer
and an older, married with children French woman
fall in love. They did not meet during a village massacre
and money is no object, Manhattan
the place I was priced out of. But after everything has happened
she cannot leave her children, not even for love, because of love,
the love that brooks no serendipity.

Here, in my family, love is taken for granted
except when it's withdrawn and then even the trees lose all meaning,
familiarity. Now it is almost dawn:
this and that must get done in committee or alone.
Don't reach, go slow as the day will allow.
But that's not what I came to say.
Perfect rest v. having a destiny.

A complete breakdown in self-discipline.
It begins by saying nothing I do matters under the eye of eternity.
Hamlet x 5 centuries.
Add to that all the science--chemistry, physics--calculus and music
I don't know. I have sat next to, at weddings,
brain surgeons and robot engineers. I hit the street
choosing a church on Fifth Ave. or Trinity Cemetery, walking the
      heartless city.

In the subsequent late night movie, a wealthy
altruistic doctor arranges for the ******
of his neurotic concubine. His guilt provides us
with an opportunity to consider
the concepts of faith and forgiveness, that all will be well in the end
after a period of meaningless suffering.
In this way the seasons have been circulating for eons via convexity.

I don't know what I'm doing but I'm doing it anyway.
You trust in genetics, God, prosthetics or prayer, whatever
gets you to the morning. That's when the sun,
a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second
warms your bones.
You may remember an old lover who's gone before
or continues to exist on another plane, in another ecstasy.

Having installed a new toilet seat
and made a few philanthropic donations
I can kick back tonight and watch movies, right?
Not. I'm ridding myself of another addiction
like illegal drugs via caloric restrictions
getting enough sleep for two people or more
and reading none of the dry words in books from the library.

When there's nothing to do, when I'm bored or dreary
I'll sit still and watch from the window, I'll wait
for the weather to change, which it will.

Working over Birk’s Works and other tunes my saxophonist admires—
Cheesecake, Blackbird—for the theoretical, applied mathematics
inside an abstract, audial harmonization of the Big Bang and The Fall.

The derivative reveals the ***** of the tangent along the curve of
       spacetime.
Follow that rope back and forth from the known to the unknown, your
      mountain to their shore,
an umbilical cord between cities and stories, history and hope, divinity
       and mortality

                        *                        *    ­                    *

I never had anything wise or gentle to say to my parents.
About bladder function. They got the same treatment as every other
       soldier.
Which systems shut down first and how. The mail keeps coming even
      after you’ve stopped barking.

And what is man made of? Man. Tough it out, laugh about it. Take it out
on your spouse and sons. Democracy corrects itself
through constant criticism, neurotic carping, daily life as low intensity
      warfare. That’s how we show we care.

                        *                        *        ­                *

Will my letter to the editor be in the funny pages?
Will I even be able to read it?
Did I send it to the wrong address? I’ve seen my death face and it’s not
      pretty.

Maybe I can watch your varsity games from a viewfinder in the afterlife.
If I don’t finish The Iliad, maybe there’s a library there.
Maybe. Maybe is a long, long time.

                        *                        *        ­                *

Homer tries several ways to explain the slaughter:
by describing how a spear pierces a warrior’s jawbone or armor,
how Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s hissy fits contribute to the pain of being
      a soldier

and how the gods, esp. Zeus, are passionate, confused, obtuse.
A callow youth even as a man. He was afraid and therefore could not
      comfort or help.
Perhaps he has a question he’d like to ask but isn’t sure what it is or how
      to ask it.

                        *                        *          ­              *

The hero loses urinary control.
The virtuoso loses interest in her bow.
The expert neglects to do the research.

How do cancer cells and bacteria cooperate to ****
the host (you)? The way yr mum & pop
******* up. It’s unavoidable and it’s not your fault.

Dear Robert
                I'm enclosing the warranty
                                 for your shaver In case
anything should happen
                I've circled the address
                                 where to bring it

Dad still isn't feeling
                well and is going
                                 this week to the doctor I can't
imagine
                what can be wrong -
                                 but I'm really getting concerned

Oh!
                by the way
                                 did you mail
that letter
                to the bank
                                 I hope
so

Today
                we are going to a wake
                                 for Phyllis Spina.
She died
                on Saturday -
                                 acute leukemia.

Your brothers are fine
                they're off -
                                 Yom Kippur
All else is
                okay Love
                                 Mom

I am outside the circle of ***. Just as well. Population control,
the biome's survival instinct. Or I'm old. Look
in mirror, skin over bones. Young girls
on bicycles, running, have that granddaughterly smile for me,
all is safe, well. Much is well.
                                                  The neighborhood safe,
the nation a non-violent helpmate among nations. Until
food shortages, weather crises, nuclear mischief apply.
Police patrols. I was proud of Massachusetts
voting to decriminalize ******. Let's go all the way:
free all non-violent offenders from their cells! Force police
out of cruisers to walk the streets and say hello.
What else can we try:
                                       Open the border with Mexico. Let labor
flow like capital.
                              What has this to do with the self,
the temperamental, fragile self. The one that leaves no footprint
in eternity. No smell.

Books to the library
photos to family.
Paint cans and lumber
from renovations years ago.
Most of the furniture
including the piano.
Fastest way to do this
is rent a dumpster.

On the internet
nothing’s permanent.
I like that.
Photosynthesis, evaporation
as if your spirit disappears
when the sun appears.
It’s a burden lifted
not to have to persevere.

Edits
for clarity
and brevity.
One owes the reader
a respite from
the tonnage of
fructifying English.
To drown one’s book is devoutly to be wished.

Coupla trumpets,
big comfy couch,
four beds and dressers
and the contents of closets.
Tools we don’t use,
surge protectors and chargers,
lawn and patio accoutrements,
table settings for ten.

Lamplit underground,
the stray branch,
synchronized chaos,
a red fez.
One canary,
map of Antarctica,
three deaf little otoliths,
six or seven sybils.

Extra salt and pepper shakers,
sharpies and crayons,
a printer and a scanner,
the Bible and Koran.
Kaput calculators and computers,
subscriptions and prescriptions,
a host of vitamins
and the ghosts of ancestors.

Time itself
but not nature.
Wealth
and most of culture
but not my health.
That I’ll keep,
and sleep—practice
for perfect rest.

The Stop & Shop strike v. Game of Thrones.
In Game what’s not made plain
is the condition of the people
compared with warriors and queens.
There’s no mention of land-clearance, tree-felling,
pruning, chopping, digging, hoeing,
weeding, branding, gelding, slaughtering,
salting, tanning, brewing, boiling,
smelting, forging, milling, thatching,
fencing and hurdle-making, hedging, road-mending and haulage.

As for the strike, most of us
supported the cashiers and clerks—
cutting benefits and pensions
when CEOs make millions.
A few pennies more
for ice cream and tofu
a leg up for our neighbors
and comrades in labor.
But don’t get greedy, power-hungry—
we don’t want the supermarket to go out of business
or the Army of the Dead to extinguish us.

A red-tailed hawk observes what small mammals, birds are in the
     clearcut,
awaits the moment to strike.
Three *****, two strikes, full count. Aaron pitched carefully, slow
     strikes and the opposing team scored.
Transit strike. Part-time tutor,
food deliverer, illegal immigrant,
school bus driver, supermarket bagger.
Let labor flow like capital! Full tank of gas!
In your dreams, you kick ***.
In your daydream, you’re breaking bones, killing mean dogs with bare
     hands .
In my childhood dreams, I fought side by side with my best buddies
against the Army of the Dead.
I wake up to a lightning strike and my dream incinerates.

The strike is over, like a thunderstorm.
Still a half dozen or so episodes of Thrones
before it sinks into the past.
Will women save the world?
Anything’s possible.
Nothing changes in Williamstown, Willie, except the seasons.
The wee hours, the bored minutes, the second guesses,
the town sewer department, the collector of taxes.
Pitcher’s elbow, runner’s knee, reader’s eye,
you live until you die.
That’s no answer.
Without the Mexican and Canadian borders
the White Walkers would dissolve like an aspirin in seltzer water.

The sun is up, the strike is over
next episode of Game is Sunday
the White Walkers attack
some of our favorite characters croak
but humanity survives
though the weather is ominous.
The habitable zone around the sun
is moving outward as the orb expands
getting hotter as it grows older.
Earth a billion years ago
was smack in the middle of the turf
but we’re now half-in, half-out
exposed to the sun’s ardor, agony,
a dragon eating its babies, torching cities.
We’re gonna hafta outsmart it
hold Labor Day barbecues on Mars.

Last night's Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire, not starring Adam
      *******,
great in the great tradition of Metropolis, Fellini, Children of
      Paradise, Ikiru, Open City.
This is not comedy though it can be funny overhearing people
      thinking,

the randomness of thought, data dots, circles with dots, sadness and
      silliness,
silly sadness, confusion, rarely a clear thought, not one logical
lucid progression. Deep art.

I'd like to do better than my best so far, write something with
      hydroxyapatite
that won't gather dust then become dust a neuron of
sweetness, an early morning bicyclist, a lost ghost or fallen angel

any form from which death might abstain or forego appetite.
Appearing to meander from subject to subject is my practice.
      Looking for solutions to the equations. Learning the changes then
      forgetting them.
The expressions emanating from mortal minds are broken stamens,
      sticky stigmas.

Striving for immortality,
some Spanish philosopher (who looks like Don Quixote)
says he understands and it's alright.

I will read what he wrote and probably agree
but is he immortal? Not his body, but his thoughts.
True, I say, but this also: Not his mind, but his thoughts. Unchanging
      and finite. Put them in a hatbox and pass them on as heirlooms.

To overhear the secret thoughts of others. Sharing and unsharing
      electrons, disrobing
and bathing. That is the purpose of poetry. Gargoyle twice. Did Wim
give each thought its own voice or use the same voice for all thoughts,
      every whim.

Blackbrush -- Coleogyne ramosissima
the dominant understory shrub
in the pinyon-juniper canyons.

Mountain-mahogany -- Cercocarpus montanus and ledifolia.
Single-leaf ash -- Fraxinus anomalus
and possibly a western hophornbeam

by the small birch-like leaves
and the shredding bark
in a moist stretch of joint trail.

The joint-fir, green ephedra
looks like an ocean plant.
Could the wind or white water rivers alone

have shaped these sandstone, red rock forms?
Network of canyons, inverse of mountains.
It had to be ocean

ebbing and flowing, emotionally, like wind,
moving atmosphere, thicker
shaving, scraping, polishing, gouging, digging

fish canyons
then, shallower, dinosaur swamps
now, dry, rock gardens.

Explain the human history with water:
did the Anasazi visit neighbors
along the canyon rims and deep within,

combination caves and red-rock houses
small windows, doorways, just crawlways,
with corn gifts on summer evenings

when the canyon bottoms held permanent, not intermittent,
streams? After them
came the Ute and Navajo, Spanish and English.

Ravens dine on road ****.
A few long red roads connect some canyons.
The unprotected flats are overgrazed, rabbitbrush.

It is interesting
that as I learn the woody and herbaceous plants,
walk the desert foothills, I too could stay.

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.

Next to my son's anger
plate tectonics are nothing
to me. His unhappiness
was caused by me.
His purpose and mine
is to catch photons and
store them in our bones.
Time measures change
which continues without self-doubt.
There is no self there.
Therefore, why care about
my son's anger
or my guilt?

Is it possible as Deutsch
suggests that the changes
a self-aware organism can
applying the scientific method
instantiate are innumerable
compared to those of the sun
or any big bang?
Therefore, one must care
about the harm you've done
or the good you'd do.
As Stevens proved
the essential activity's
to imagine the world
then test it against the breeze.

What good is philosophy
without a confession
I sometimes hit
whenever angry
and can **** given
opportunity and permission.
My knowledge of enduring
seeds and periodic
elements is limited
by my impatience.
If I could stop
circle with a dot
breathing
perhaps then I would
understand myself. But
what is there to know about the self?

Long ago, according to Borges,
Shakespeare imposed
a self-imposed silence
on himself. He knew
what, that perfect acts,
accurate and factual,
actually requiring
microscopes and telescopes
for growing small and going far
take you to the very space a
gentle breeze and ridiculous bird
occupy at the end of the mind
at the end of your life.
As Arpad Vass writes:
"Death initiates a complex process by which the human body
      gradually reverts to dust
but minerals may fill the cracks and voids, bonding the
      hydroxyapatite and allowing the bones to join . . ."
in the happy tectonics
of the earth's plates.

If a poem or essay can end with a conclusion or its opposite, either one,
Can it be of any use to anyone?

Do the discrepancies and disparities, dualities and densities, reflect only
      the dementia
Of the bearer of the pencil?

First entertain, then enlighten if you can. One stretches truth in order
      to pretend,
Another leavens with levity one's inevitable end.

Most days it's not possible to bring your life into an expressible state.
Disparate hopes, arduous chores, word choices. And, of course, the  
      state of the state.

Driven by ideas rather than rhymes, for it is not metres, but a
      metre-making argument,
That makes a poem. Convenience store or university English
      department

The day's disputes, down to the meaning of the weather, leave you
      indisposed
To share your heart of zero and your inner rose.

It is the strong force, the energy of the loved ones combined with
      cooperation for good or war.
Dad's years in New Guinea fighting ****, he said, were his best by far.

The best that can be said or done is Be where you are. Love the one
      you're with
Not necessarily an adult of the opposite ***, perhaps just a kid who
      hates math

And school, dresses goth, reads rarely but learns a lot from movies
      and YouTube,
Has the presence of mind to say I am who I am, deal with it. That's
      who I want to be

And have always been. Today clean the house, again. Woke up this
      morning to two thoughts:
How sweet to be alive! Life is tough.

I begin the day buying yogurt in a small
favorite grocery store. The clerk
a man of few pretenses was making jokes
about his wife, how they fight in bed.
Discovering the better stores in the community.
In a given day, isolated from friends,
I speak to few people. An old woman
asks me for directions to the post office
or I speak to a stranger over the phone about night work.

At home my every thought comes to the counterpoint of
      a dream:
a girl I love surprises me by knocking on the window.
I ply my arts all day alone.
After this silence like being hidden away in the woods
in a cabin, bored
but owing no member of society an explanation,
invitation to a party. A flow of wine and devilish drugs
and quickly I am making a fool of myself.

My new friends like me
but when they think about me at all,
they wonder.
                        Wandering home
through the midnight air, alone again,
free, admiring
the ghostly houses of my new neighbors
by new moonlight.

There is absolutely nothing to do. Some people
fall in love. I go have a cheese sandwich
with mustard. Watch skyscraper lights from
the bed. Look at the books and decide to read
none of the dry words. The cheese sandwich is
good, and orange juice. It's cold in the kitchen
so I go back to bed even though it's Spring.

Some people go dancing in fish net stockings.
They find a good time - but exactly what this means -
it's not more important than a star. Quite
what is this waiting. Tonight I could disappear
and the world might not miss me until next year.
I remember passionate nights with some of the women
I've known. Two sides of a smooth stone.

Pocket knives, tape measures.
An extensive collection of coins.

Nails, screws, numerous sizes, and sets
of nail clippers, files, polishes and brushes.

Shoes, always shoes. And dresses.
Shirts and ties. Loud and quiet.

The sick and the dead are forever quiet,
never quite quiet. Our solicitude's unnecessary.

Playing cards, backgammon games,
chess. Every move's a variation on the next.

And so it is with words, numbers,
shapes and sizes. Feet and hands,

knees and eyes. Why and where and how won't matter
once we've divided the bags of clothes

among the poor and destitute. It's not too hard
to laugh too hard. The son and daughter deliver them

and then go home. Letters, wallets, clocks and watches.
Photographs in which the name and face don't match.

Lonely bagel
Loneliness bagel
The bagel of loneliness

Togetherness bagel
The bagel of being together
Bagel of belonging

Rereading the poems of others
and my own. Community across
time and graves. What's left
exceeds in significance
one's last moment. Yet
his last moment must have been
exceedingly important
for the poet.

Nothing he did that day will seem meaningful.
While we prosecute the war
a pileated woodpecker and red squirrel
compete for sunflower seeds.
A winter slow
to assert itself.
I can still see my mother's father and his bowl
of filberts, almonds, walnuts
quiet weekday mornings.

Both grandfathers read sports
pages religiously. I don't know
if my grandmother who gave me the
anthology of, to date, dated
unreadable poems read poetry.
I remember my mother's mother spoke
rarely as an animal.

Writing but not knowing where I'm going
unlike Joan Didion justly
cannibalizing candidates
who didn't read the Constitution, Bill of Rights or
Federalist Papers. It's late,
I have not vacuumed or shopped for food.
Instead I reread
Phil Levine's Salami.

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.

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.

Late in life I struggle against my insignificance
When I should enjoy the freedom from performance before an audience.
Applause is happiness but if they withhold applause, embarrassment.
When Da Liu put me to work crunching hexagrams and spreadsheet
      numerology
Instead of ghost writing his books about t’ai chi for longevity
I was humiliated but freed. No need to interpret
The Chinese master’s wisdom or endure his disapproval.
All this happened in an apartment on 110th St. when I lived on 111th.
I wonder if Da Liu lived to 100 like he predicted.

Ken got me that job, old friend Ken
Who goes back all the way past high school to Thompson Junior High.
Tomorrow we’re eating pizza together in Troy.
We’ll recall Da Liu and also the painter and sculptor who had a room
In our apartment on 111th and a dog so intelligent it could walk off the
      leash
On the crowded streets of New York without an altercation,
And Zach Sklar, of course, journalist, communist and jazz aficionado
Who listened to Jo Jones and Paul Quinichette, Count Basie’s men,
Often as possible at the West End.

Trying to make sense on the trumpet, I was playing the streets for
      quarters, not much more
Than that sculptor’s dog, the sculptor’s name I wanna say
Was Mike Johnson and he was a man of few words and many women.
We had a major cockroach problem in that apartment and
The ceiling leaked in Ken’s room so he organized the neighbors
Against the landlord, into a tenants association.
We went to our daily disciplines like children of paradise or Da Liu who
      was already old by then.
When we meet for pizza it will be hard to hear now that I’m deaf
In one ear and Ken, whose name means knowledge, has trouble
      remembering some of the ancient, past taboos and practices.

To want to be famous is a silly goal for a man almost old as Da Liu.
Not the right motivation, better to shift your glances so slowly as to go
      unnoticed,
Labor for the success and happiness of others.
I’m still avoiding the deeper question
So today I ordered Da Liu’s books, perhaps the ones I worked on,
Because they offer assistance to others for further living.
Service to others, maybe that’s the key.

I pleasure in and treasure my insignificance,
It ought to be a great comfort to be so insignificant,
Being knowledgeable is the best defense against your insignificance, the
I Ching puts me in mind of my insignificance, exiled or
Sidelined to an insignificant role, insignificant and mighty happenings
Seem the same from my vantage aging gratefully, inexorably,
A way to learn your insignificance, freedom to have never been.

In the singularity
perfectly good poems
are being written by laughing
and crying machines
washing machines and dryers
about their daily tasks
and ambivalences
which will be indistinguishable
from those of future
farmers and philosophers.

In the singularity
evolution can be said
to be the master sorter of data
as in the factories
of the suns
where protons are smashed together
and unusual weather patterns
make consciousness a candidate
interesting for its complete dependence
on the substrate of the brain and body.

In the singularity
everything anyone once did
always remains current
as if invented yesterday
for an immediate purpose
such as curing cancer
although that may be unnecessary
to achieving immortality
i.e. the happiness one feels
the day before thanksgiving.

Bear’s certain
it’s a bear
alone with salmon
it’s a bear
on the mountain
it’s a bear
up a canyon
it’s a bear
eating berries
it’s a bear
sedated, carried
it’s a bear
answer, query
it’s a bear
clown or faery
it’s a bear

No words, oily body sweats, city summer.
Desperate to get out and never return although
stalled on Triborough Bridge I admired the skyline.

My city, my death, I did it my way.
Counting your blessings a healthy activity,
the park out my back window, a job that pays.

But I am losing strength to fight
for the world in my imagination. Acceptance of reality
makes me a fossil of society.

Basho in old age found strength to walk
deep into the mountains. He visited famous sites
up north. Po Chu-i traveled mountains in his dreams.

You can leave at any time. You can return
without being seen. A way to learn
your insignificance, freedom to have never been.

While I'm reading a poem about it on the previous page
the girls come over to visit their boyfriends and dance
in high shoes and perfume. Their legs are strong and their voices
      high.
And the guys get high and hard thinking about what the girls are
      like behind their eyes.

That says more about me than reality. And it's exactly four lines.
Ken Patchen would say his angel smells sweet and sassy.
I feel the bony fingers of mine who has been working to stay
      alive.

Enough small poetry. One must conceive of a project -
say a poem about a bridge–or stop writing
and instead walk over the bridge at sunset and see the city in a
      nuclear war
the clocks, the Watchtower and the docks gone and no smoke.

I still exist but I'm late for my job. I'm dressed well
in honor of true love and Spring which both outlast the
      holocaust.
The manager cans me with the cold hard eyes of one who
      accepts the rules entirely.

Goodbye to the rows of dead metal desks and goodbye
to those who can take it longer than I.

The guys downstairs do not read poetry and very little prose.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money does
      not occupy their minds.
The *** pistils of the mountain daisy is no concern of theirs
and the man upstairs who plays the horn is less than a curiosity
      but makes more noise.

When I feel like this nothing matters and this is good -
get warm with wine, turn out the lights and turn up the radio -
if only there were a woman who liked the down and out life too.

In the end someone sticks a gun in my face in the South Bronx.
How I got among the fire escapes in the sooty alley I cannot say
but it is one of my earliest memories. Perhaps it is my
      grandmother holding my hand
or one of the clowns. I say Drop that ******* gun and he blows me
      away.

Two hawks aloft
crows anxious banding together
Carol Ott comes over to my house, likes the warm weather,
      November
a California Christmas and maybe species will change places
      to reflect that,
paints watercolor ornaments, gentle Jewish lady
how far from her past is she now? or is she quite aware just
      not talking about it now
I wonder what she thinks the solution to Israel-Palestine
      might be
ask her sitting around the pool next summer
almost always disappointed people haven't given the single
      state solution more thought
we discuss Thanksgiving, the cleaning and cooking before
      and the cleaning after, then the insane Christmas potlatch
deciduous trees have a special winter beauty, conifers among
      them.

Spring morning,
quiet. One coyote,
three deer
running in snow.

What else have I seen?
A sparrow hawk in mid-air ******
a robin, a sharp-shinned hawk catch
a rabbit in its talons.

A deaf mute in a pear tree.
Not one wolverine
in Utah or Italy.
Nor a famous samurai.

A young black bear
traverses the lawn in August.
Also quarks. Also oaks.
Do not disturb its progress!

A red fox
alert, no limp
flows silently
across the meadow.

First light, green tea.
A person thinking
epochs and eons.
A platoon of chickadees.

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.

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.