A Near-Life Experience

Magic always brings
Its hocus-pocus
Restrictions with it.
Perfection can't stand
Its own company.

The sleeping glacier
Rests its gleaming coils
Along Valhalla's
Serpentine stone spine
Right in front of me.

How ouroboros
To mate a pattern
Of no relation
To itself except
Geometrical.

Magic doesn't make
Problems disappear.
Magic transforms them
Into new problems
Involving magic.

How to keep a spell
From sliding sideways.
How to disappear
Politely. So on.
It seems I've come back home.

The Swallows of Payette Lake

The dude with the s'more bucket
Just walked by. We're at a lodge
We can't afford in a part of the country
Hard for us to ignore, where the snow
Hangs on into late spring. We love

Being crazy. The swallows circle
The heritage silver clouds
Of the high-country evening.
I've never seen so many swallows.
I had not thought life had undone
So many. Oh, but they're hungry,

Cruising for gnats and mosquitoes
While one furious raven complains,
And the splits of timber in the compass
Circle of the outdoor hearth just for guests
Collapse, spark, and point in all directions.

Billingsley Creek

No wonder rivers
Charm philosophers.
This water rushing
From black basalt cliffs
Over tumbled rocks
Foams so fast it seems
One perpetual

Marbled solid thing.
Eye catches motion
While mind feels sculpture,
Cold and perfect source
Of fond metaphors
From Heraclitus,
Buddha, and proverbs

In a thousand tongues.
Cross the old footbridge
To the cottonwood-
Anchored green island
Where the endless roar
Surrounds you and wait.
The past is changing.

Beer for Dinner

One of the few clichés to constitute
A falsifiable hypothesis
Is the saw that asserts "most of the things
People worry about never happen."

I can't seem to falsify it myself.
Weirder still, even when I worry less,
The percentage of dread that comes to pass
Seems to stay about the same. This cheers me,

And I try to remind myself often
That the return on worrying's the same,
More or less, as the return on blackjack.
Too bad it's what we don't dread that gets us.

Jamais vu

It's all unfamiliar to me,
This white light filling the suburbs
Of a middle-continent town.

How many passwords have I lost,
How many former phone numbers,
How many names and addresses?

It's not that, not that exactly.
It's not just that I've forgotten
The tchotchkes of my existence.

Even when I know what I see,
The seeing and knowing feel strange,
And being aware feels absurd.

At best an epic catalogue
Of lyrical quotidian
Moments could only make a sieve

From cross hatching words and phrases
Through which the strangeness pours like broth
From unreconstructed stone soup:

More clouds now than moments ago--
Sarah meditates on the lawn--
The sounds of cars fill nearby streets--

The day's half gone--we have to go--
A campus clock tower chimes and gongs
A hollowed hour it can't complete--

However attention tightens--
However wisdom enlightens--
Gaps in shadows slightly widen.

Hive Mind

We perform our selfless services
To the selfish creative artists,
Falsifiers of hypotheses,
Elaborators of arguments.

We read their stories, we read the news,
We seek out poems for sustenance,
Discoveries for reassurance,
Ideas for hopes we can't outcompete.

We remain poor, humble consumers
In the marketplace of fantasies,
Cheering spectators in the cheap seats
Perched above the blood sport of ideas.

And what are the thanks we get for this,
We, sterile, worker castes of culture?
We get to elaborate our dreams
With the terrors felt by drones and queens.

Deep White Matter

The news was full of the full moon,
The super moon, meaning only
The largest, brightest moon this year--
Goofy, spooky nomenclature.

The day dawned unusually cold
In the streets of Salt Lake City,
Relative to a mild spring here
Passed partly among relatives.

The grandfather rowed in the lake
Among the whitecaps, no sailboats
To interfere with his workout,
The raw weather a boon to oars.

The mother dragged herself downstairs
To where the invalid father dozed
And handed him their chirping child
Ravenous for yogurt and juice.

The grandmother rose late, worried
About the weather for a trip
Planned for grandchildren at the zoo,
But delighted at a day out.

The aunt and uncle and cousin
Arrived on time, ready to go,
Despite the chill, wanting to see
The blind sea lion at the zoo.

Small details, good compost for dreams,
The body's retort to the mind,
Reminding memory the moon
Will drag deep tides from sleep tonight.