Sleep

Peculiarly common seduction,
seductively common, peculiar,
nothing to do with resting the bones,

once you get down to bare bones of it,
a pause for certain parts of the brain,
but only certain parts, which gives pause,

which lets poets and gurus figure sleep
as rehearsal for extinction, for not
asking why extinction needs rehearsing.

Lactose, Fructose, Alcohol, Sucrose . . .

Only one set
Of experiences
Is literally sweet:

Sugar. Nothing else,
From first puppy love
To last lingering kiss,

Is anything
More than metaphor
For tasting sugar.

Sugar, sugar,
Sugar! Only
Air and water

Can compete
With that need
For something sweet.

Sex is fine,
And love, we all
Damn well agree,

Is better.
Vitamins and protein,
Various healthy things

Like sleep
And dreams, however
Pleasant or 

Otherwise, are 
Necessary to whatever  
Life we keep,

But sugar, sugar,
And only sugar,
Is actually sweet.

Last Church of Old Ghost Highway

"you know what's weird?"
"nothing" 
~ overheard overlooking the lake

The cathedral of present awareness is weird,
So elaborately concentrated and sheared

At the sides, where one expects external supports
But finds only the nothing that was and, of course,

The nothing that never will be. For the scary
And the willing to be afraid, sanctuary

Of sorts, a shelter open to the wind and all
Who are able to content themselves without walls.

Still, to say this is sacred is not to say safe,
The present, after all, denotes time, not a place,

The present-perfect present of vanishing storm
And spectral mists in the hills, regathering storms.

When Seeking Stops

" Swim until you can't see land"

How can we live without looking around,
Evaluating our circumstances,
Fantasizing about them improving,
And worrying about them worsening?

The question itself is unsure
Whether it is rhetorical
Or in earnest. In the present,
Nothing is still: how could we be?

Now gives everything and
Gives everything away.
Out in the cold green lake,
I want for nothing else

But more of this
Nothing I can
Keep, everything
I have to lose.

Only 
What can't
Be saved
Can save.

Slocan Sunday: The Sky, the Mountains, the Lake, the Village, the Creek, and the Labyrinth....

Why the labyrinth?
Most artificial
Symbol for a range
Of nature's puzzles,
One exit only,

Only one way through,
By rule, by fiat
Tenebrae, how us.
No task not human
Is so predisposed.

Our punctured circle,
Spiraling inward,
And in the middle,
A dead end, full stop,
No way out but back.

We have shaped these signs
In every culture,
From ochre on rock
To stained-glass windows,
To circles in corn:

Perfectly linear,
Symmetrical, false
Problems of escape.
We draw them as we
Draw faith: with no help.

The Mysterious Clouds of Slow Lake

They can't be different. They can't.
Clouds are clouds around the world.
In time-lapse photography,
These would boil across the blue
As time-lapsed clouds always do.
And yet they don't. They don't move,
Not in a teachable way.

They can't be different. They can't.
Motionless as palace guards,
Numerous as pin angels,
Solemn as white-wigged judges,
They disappear and appear.
Nothing you notice changes,
And all you notice is change.

So Much Resistance of Things

"so many things seem filled with the intent /to be lost"

The whole damn world is willful 
In every detail. We want
To impute this willfulness,
If not to a sagacious
Deity or destiny,
To large abstract principles,
Basic forces, cosmic laws.

God or a malicious witch
We can believe might have willed
The hard rain, the sudden fall,
But if not them, then nature,
Electromagnetism,
Gravity, evolution
By natural selection.

But cause may not be mindful,
Nor the product of great laws.
Cause inheres in every mote,
In the sub-subatomic,
Each infinitesimal:
Free, mindless wills, all at once,
Universal anarchy.