Slef

I am no better than I have to be
Nor am I, at my worst, as good as that;
When called to be much better, I am flat,
A harsh note out of perfect melody.
There is but small hope for improving me,
Since I must do it as self-autocrat
And all the cheap solutions are too pat
To help me help myself. Alarmingly,
However, those around me seem to think
That there is something in me more than this
And tell me as I claim I'm past my power
That I am not, as long as I don't sink
Into a self-discouraging abyss
But let myself be me, and therefore tower.

Inferno

As I return from a relaxed vacation
Flying a metal tube up in the air
I pass above extensive conurbation
That seems to be entangled everywhere.
How can I tell where New York finally ceases
Or where Connecticut begins to be?
Where is New Jersey? In how many pieces
Should I divide the single thing I see?
Up here it seems so easy to unite
What those below believe to be distinct,
And would, if told to come together, fight
Rejecting all suggestion they are linked.
But which is true, you ask? I cannot tell
Perhaps we need the circles in our hell.

By Cause

I cannot look directly at the sun
Yet I am sure it shines, since I can see;
The air I breathe is visible to none
Nor can I show the proof of gravity
Except to say I'm still upon the ground
And breathing, so they both are surely here,
Just as the ambience of petty sound
Proves something presses on my waiting ear.
The wind unseen can cut, afflict, or balm,
Demonstrating as it does its presence
Remembered even in the dead of calm
Despite frustration at its evanescence
So is it, love, observing you apart:
You must exist, since I still have a heart.

King Street 3

Here beside the shores of Puget
Where the ocean meets the land
I'm aware that tempus fugit
Time must fly and cannot stand.
As the sky sweeps down to meet me
Fog and cloud and dripping mist
Family too will rush to meet me
Fortune hardly to be missed.
Yet I find it something lacking
If alone in lacking her
Whom I could not, in my packing,
Bring along, though I'd prefer.
But since she would be afar
Anyway: well here we are.

Not Platte

Why the hell are all these rivers brown?
Do the fish, perhaps, prefer it so?
Or are they, like the landscape, beaten down
By wind and ice and unforgiving snow
Until the very essence of their flow
Is murked by the effluence of the land?
I'm sure that it must help the crops to grow
For there they flourish, as if by command,
But can it really, on the other hand,
Be best to have the water so opaque,
The color of an almost-wettened sand
Or peanut butter malted chocolate shake?
I do not know, but as it passes through
It bothers me it isn't very blue.

T

A trip like this is not best done alone;
The sights I see all very out to be shared
Whether because their beauty has outshone
The best that expectation could have dared
Or merely from desire to express
To other ears the silliness observed
It hardly matters. Neither is the less
Because the other is, and both have served
To make me wish my love were here with me;
And yet not so, for why would I impose
The journey on her? Better just to be
Myself, in day-old stubble, stink, and clothes.
The sleepless rumble of the midnight train
Is pleasure yes, but also mixed with strain.

Western ND

In theory, Big Sky country should be coming
But at the moment hills of black obscure my view;
The train beneath me mightily is humming,
As is the freight train we are passing, too,
And as the hills roll by the trees thereon
Are clumped together like a Chia pet
Untended since the 80s and far gone
So that by now its patterning has set.
In little breaks between the trees I spy
The sprawling farms I thought that I should see,
Buy as the train and I both pass them by
They do not show very impressively
Albeit I admit the skies of gray
Are not designed to set off bales of hay.