Clouds Drift, and Then...

The crumpled blanket of our sky
is my hesitance for waking up
unless I need to; like everyone
I prefer the warm idleness of a world
at the mercy of my imagination.
The impermanence of clouds
lands my feet on the floor, then
everything happens.

January 2021

The inefficiency of human life

What's lost in the cartilage of the Earth
--seems inefficient, he noticed: old people die
with heads full of knowledge, while young
people must learn it all for themselves.
Are we stuck in some kind of cycle?
Shit, maybe.  But it wasn't ever about
knowing, as such, right--that's why
the internet isn't just an encyclopedia.
Doesn't satisfy him, but man, sometimes
I don't care anymore if it does or not.
Except then Oliver will rage about nothing
and I recall being obstinate, hateful, &
I know my father learned to respond to me;
as I must now haltingly learn to respond,
even though these kids must be easier,
and I agree this is pretty inefficient.

January 2021

Oh. Was that it?
The whole digit 
on a series of calendars, now trash,
ticking forward at midnight—
am I onstage now? Well.
“Here are the things I have 
prepared,” but fumbling
through my bag, I cannot find,
“wait a second,”
I must have left them.
At home, or maybe
on a bench somewhere
back when we did
things outside.
“I’ll tell you a story, then—“
and that’s how you’ll learn
how little I have to tell
for an entire year gone.

January 2021

Winter Farms

I saw you from the highway
(maybe you saw my car,
an expensive bubble of different
air heated to sixty-eight,
screaming past at seventy-four:
all engine noise, aerodynamics,
synthetic rubber on asphalt)—
you paused
on the farmhouse porch,
sized up the winter chill, then
turning to your barn, I saw
your resolute march
into snow and frozen air,
the highway one dull roar
behind you nearby,
an audience taking in
your pastoral silhouettes.

December 2020

We stare at the brown starless sky
wishing for something new—not
new to humankind, but new to us:
an unexpected conversation, some
experience of another human’s way,
some turn of phrase or thought
we hadn’t had before. Anyway, we stare
and the brown sky is silent,
like our minds, like our lost encounters,
saying nothing back to us. 
Our hearts will beat like this
for years, craving that next thrill
of the unforeseen: because,
as I heard once in a phone call
with a distant friend, time passes
evenly, but with no marks of Newness
seems to slip whole weeks & years
into a blank and sightless void, so that
thinking back, it seems time cheated us 
running swiftly toward our ends
when all we can recall is some
cold, unfeeling, brown & starless sky.

December 2020