Daedalus

For centuries we could but dream of flying

With waxen wings that melted in the sun;

A hopeful youth, enraptured and then dying:

Pursuing freedom, and by it undone.

Then through hard work we made our wings of steel

And strapped them to huge motors to ascend;

No more a myth: a fantasy made real,

The full achievement of the longed-for end.

Then, being human, we could never rest

On the achievement of a miracle:

We took the triumph of this ancient quest

That turned what was fantastic to empirical 

And made it awful (as we use the word):

Uncomfortable, unpleasant, and absurd.

Classroom Experiment

The sky is screaming over each sunset,

Complaining that the purple is too much;

Sinking into the sea, the sun is wet,

Contaminated by its liquid touch.

The empty stars illuminate the scene

As night descends and darkens as it does;

The orange has faded out of Halloween

And all is watered-down from what it was.

Tomorrow, not today, the sun will fill

And burn again into its watery grave;

The orange and purple of its pained plunge will

Once more wash over every winking wave.

For now, the night commands the silent sea

But we remember how the day will be.

Ekphrasis in a Nursery

The Jesus on the wall can read a book

(A tech but little known when he was living);

I doubt that most would give a second look

To see the lesson that this Christ is giving,

But I am cursed to wonder if he reads

More slowly from a codex than a scroll

And if, when his stigmata slowly bleeds,

It stains the pages. This then takes a toll

On my imagination of the scene:

The children being read to would then see

The spreading red, and ask what it could mean

And contemplate his remortality

And Jesus, seemingly returned and preaching 

Would wonder if they'd heard what he was teaching.

Song of Myself

I contradict, but not like Whitman did.

I am not large, except in belly size.

Within my soul no multitudes are hid.

I contradict myself--am sometimes wise,

Sometimes a fool, always a human being--

Because I cannot keep my own thoughts straight.

If God exists, all knowing and all seeing,

Immense and awesome, immeasurably great,

To them my thoughts would be no awful tangle:

In their dimension all would be quite clear.

But I, mere mortal, have no holy angle

To disambiguate my hope and fear.

I contradict myself, and therefore suffer

Like any other simple, honest duffer.

Haze

The sun hangs lower in the sky today

Than I recall it hung a year ago.

The clouds obscure it with their tired gray;

Perhaps that's why it now appears so low.

Or maybe I have moved without my knowing

To some exotic and more northern clime

Where even summer sun is not caught showing

Its face above the hills, and cannot climb.

Perhaps today, just once (or now, forever),

I'm just a little taller than I was

Lifted above the sun by my own lever.

Or maybe it seems lower now because 

I am a little sadder, and the sky 

Responds to how I feel, and won't ask why.

Sun

The dog has found a sunbeam, where

She doesn't worry about life.

She seems to lack a single care,

Forgetting hunger, pain, or strife.

She sits and lounges her limbs out

Her belly flat against the floor

Her tail still flipping roundabout

And slapping carpet more and more.

She's ceased to pant; her tongue is still;

Her eyes are closed in ecstacy;

She loves the sun and drinks her fill

As comfortable as she can be

Until her awful owner shuts

The curtain. Oh, she hates my guts.

Canals

My love is like a mighty river's flow

That runs on unimpeded to the sea;

My love is like the current, great but slow,

Imposing in its own immensity.

My love is like the flood that, when it rains,

Expands the river out of its known course

And though it may cause unexpected pains

Will irrigate the land with its great force.

My love is like meanders that swing wide

And circle back to its first course again;

My love is like the high banks that abide 

To house the settlements of hopeful men.

And like those men, I dig my own way out

To channelize my love past fear or doubt.

People Watching

There is a minor pleasure in observing;

In being near, but not quite in, a scene.

For some it may be awkward or unnerving

To worry that their seeing may be seen,

But let it be: let the observed observe.

My watching pleasure needs not to foreclose

Another's. Better--they deserve

The same as I. The pleasure grows

Not from some sense of exclusivity 

But from the knowledge that our world is shared,

That I and they are present equally

Our souls both hidden or perhaps both bared.

I sit and watch the people, and the pleasure

Comes from our shared experience of leisure.

Le Metro

The metro is the city. Take New York:

It never sleeps, although sometimes it should.

Boston's Green Line, modeled on a fork,

Splits like its city lines. Vancouver could

Like all its trees and mountaintops

Survive without a human presence. Broad

Industrial Chicago puts its stops

Where everyone can see them. London's odd

Because it's first, and thinks it did it best;

DC's a grand and new experiment;

The BART a convoluted, sprawling mess;

Seattle's not quite sure what "metro" meant.

And having surveyed this, and rode them all,

I ask: why are there two in Montréal?

Pause

I do not much like waiting. No, not much.

I'd rather run around the block twice--thrice--

(Getting all sweaty, limping, forced to clutch

My aching side) than sit in a nice

And shady bus stop. Let me act and do:

Don't make me pause, no matter if it matters;

The time it takes to catch up and review 

May be important, but leaves me in tatters.

I do not operate in mindful sloth

But run, run, run, so much that I've been mocked

For running when all others would be loath

And for forever going off half-cocked.

I've done the thinking, well before I moved

Now let me go, and let that thought be proved.

ppm

The air is solid, tickling my throat

As it goes down, like taffy when I chew:

It slides and sticks, the sticking makes it coat,

The coating makes the breathing hard to do.

And I am well; I have no normal trouble;

I waste no time on thinking about air.

Imagine those outside my little bubble,

Who live in normal times in need of care,

And think of how their breath is catching short,

How every intake must become a labor

That as it births still threatens to abort

As each half-lung leans hard upon its neighbor

And threaten to collapse because the smoke

Has turned the air now thick enough to choke.

Altijd

When I consider where my life will go

And how I'll choose to occupy my days,

Some things seem so uncertain, like a haze

Hovers between us, so I cannot know

What I'll be like--or how I ought to grow.

Then all at once, descending like the blaze

Of summer suns, you burn away the grays

And I can bask within your evening's glow.

The future would mean nothing without you.

I don't mean that I couldn't live alone

Or that you have to live your life for me

But that when I consider what I'll do

You give it context; like a crystal grown 

Upon a matrix, you're stability.

250*

It has not been 250 years.

A nation, once declared, must still be won

And that accomplished may still be undone

By ignorance and squabbles, hates and fears.

Once signatures are dry, the task appears:

To make them true--not finish what's begun,

But to begin. The war is still to run,

And then the peace, with its own dangers, nears.

Republics are not nearly automatic:

Perhaps, like watches, they too must be wound.

The declaration--grand, intense, emphatic--

Is nothing on its own but words and sound.

But it can be a horologe's schematic:

The grand ideals are still there to be found.

Awkwardness

Sometimes I do not know what I should say;

And yet I'm sure that I speak anyway.

It's often words I do not quite believe 

Or that some social script suggests to me;

The way you speak to those who need to grieve,

Or those who wish impossibility;

How you converse with people you don't know 

And have no urge or need to meet again

But whose approval you still need, and so

You have to be polite to them, just then.

All sorts of conversations must exist

To make this world keep spinning round and round.

I have to have them. I'll just make a list,

And hope to get through each one safe and sound.

Juneteenth Views

The sky is bluer than the flag below it;

The corn is greener than the cash it brings;

The clouds are decoration, and they know it;

The trees a fringe that to the edges clings.

The vision knit together is a wonder:

A countryside unequalled anywhere.

Let nothing that may come rend it asunder;

Let it remain forever whole and fair.

Yet mankind, who has set forth field and tree,

Will also threaten what has been created;

The corn a battlefield may sometime be,

If violence uncaged be not abated,

And bodies may be buried in the soil 

That once spoke to the beauty of our toil.

Amtrak

I really, really want to take the train.

I can't convey through text how desperately:

It scratches certain itches in my brain

To travel distance locomotively.

I have, in other countries, been transported

Across two hundred miles in two hours;

It was a case of see it, say it, sorted:

Yet here it seems forever past our powers.

We would bemoan the distances we cross

And claim it impossible to better;

Yet history reveals such claims are dross:

Our past did not experience this fetter.

I ask a simple question in this rhyme:

Can we not run a goddamn train on time?

Lilacs

No matter where I am or how I feel

No matter if the day was good or bad;

No matter what experience I had,

Or if the world around me seems unreal;

No matter if the sunlight seems to peel

The surface off my eyelids 'til I'm mad;

Or I conceive myself an undergrad

With hair unwhitened and a spine of steel;

No matter how I age or I decay,

No matter how I joy in my delights;

No matter if I struggle every day

Or wander wondering past wondrous sights,

The smell of lilacs, no matter how mild

Will bring me back to when I was a child.

Void

I do not mind the dark. Why should I? What

About the time of sleep and rest should be

A terror? Instead I find, deep in my gut,

A warmth, promoting my serenity.

I do not mind the light; it too is calm,

Not overheated and not overbright:

A source of joy and gladness, and a balm

To my desire to match day to night.

It is the interchange between the two

That makes the whole of my existence sing;

Neither exclusive, both with work to do:

A constant, intermingled, single thing.

Why should I fear the dark, or light? It's neither

That would be terror. I will live with either.

Cows

Assume, if you are able, that a cow

For every purpose of our calculation

Is spherical. Don't worry about how;

This is no matter for your perspiration.

It's merely an assumption we can make

To ease the calculations we must do;

A cow's a sphere; a ball, a point; a rake,

A line. We take them to be such because

The real truth of the friction and the angles

Is not the point of what this physics does:

Reality to often merely mangles

Pure kinematic truth and certainty:

Let life be perfect, cows live spherically.

All Good Gifts

If everything around us is from God

How can we discriminate between them?

The beautiful, the normal, and the odd

As we have lived, and loved, and seen them

Are equally of God; so is the pain,

The awfulness of every worsening day

That presses like a thunderstorm, the drain

Of walking weary under skies of grey.

If all of it is God's, how can we choose?

A holy favor means a holy fault.

The good we gain; the good we also lose

Collectively define divine gestalt.

And yet this does not mean we cannot tell.

It only means we must turn ill to well.