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Waiting for the Clouds to Part

Six shades of silver
On the lake. On again,
Off again. Again, six
Shades of silver, same as
Three times six years ago
In Scotland, the Shetlands.

No one gives a shit, lad,
No one, not even you
Anymore. It's too cold
In those islands of days
Before. Here, it grows hot.
These nights are longer, now,

Although the days are, too.
Eternity awaits
Even the silvered mouse
That snaps the pantry trap
As the human, thinking,
Sips the last light out back.

A Barren Cow

One word can mean too many things.
The things a word may mean are words.
Numbers, however abstracted,
Are only more words, words, words, words,

Obsession with counting caught up
Into arithmomania,
The conviction that some names name
Meanings beyond any naming,

The reason why mathematics
And philosophy rub shoulders
More often with divinity
Than with their cousin, poetry.

Words dance a quadrille, complaining
That they are only words, no things.
They dance tarantellas housing
Automata that ignore them.

Pause. The word stark, in English, means
Or has meant, the same thing, complete,
Severe, rigid, a barren cow.
Words can come to terms with monsters.

We give our monsters up to words.
We give up ourselves, the patterns
Of interference shaking out
Between monstrous, monsters, and us.

Ever So Slightly Numb

Complacency can't be
Such a terrible thing.
It will kill you, of course,
But so will everything,
Joy, anxiety, trust.
Immortality is

A cloud on a cold spring day
When the days already are
Long enough to be summer,
And eternity sprinkles
Goose flesh promises of death
On the ever-dreaming beast
Then retreats, into the sun.

Fantasies Are Organisms

That which hovers, vaguely,
Over the surfaces of the waters
Is troubled by the teeming things

That stir up from beneath to feed
And be fed. They will not
Leave the surfaces alone,

And all the mirrors of reflection
Scatter, miserably broken charms
Which that which thinks can't be.

Back at the Lake

At the beginning of June it was
Sunny and the water was clutching
Cold, and I splashed out into it,

Unable to keep myself from thinking
That the water was spectacular
For my usual first short dip in it

But too cold, even a few quick
Strokes from shore, to not want
To turn around inside and flee.

The four locals who fell out
Of a borrowed canoe, I realized
In that instant, had not a chance,

Didn't matter drunk or sober,
Didn't matter life preservers or not:
Once their canoe was over

And they were out there in the deep
Water I love and romanticize always,
They were over, too. So too would

Have been me, have been you.
I warmed off in the sun on the bench
Then got back in, as I have to do.

Watch for Changing Conditions

Evenings at the Greenbriar Inn
In Couer d'Alene, long times ago
When our adventuring was done,

When our dog was none, our daughter
Was one, our musical artist
Of the evening was eighty-some,

I would be your huckleberry,
The sun would be singing love songs,
And you would be mine, gold long time.