Selected poems
To the time remaining
What is left
of you, whether long or short,
hovers as does a mirage
in the distance
and distance is
the medium in which
you conceal your secrets
about what and how much
time that remains but it is
up to us as to what
to do with whatever amount
of the measure
of our lives we have
yet to use, which then
provides us with
the exigency towards
momentum in
propelling our aspirations,
our positive intentions,
the proactive propulsion
of our ascendant arc,
and if not our own
then whatever it is
we can do for others,
or at least another
other than ourselves
in either an instant
or in a meaningful
hour, the most fervid
day, which might cast
itself as a prototype for
another that may
lay the karmic riprap
for more after that as long
as our purposes remain
resolute, as may our
time remaining, which then
portends that whatever
the amount we strive
to appreciate and savor
the instant of our lives,
which perpetuates beyond
the timelessness
in which you only dress
yourself in appearances,
since whatever remains
beyond you is sustained
by the impediment of
your inherent calculation
whose restrictions only
limit what is bound by you,
since however much
you are and whatever
the time you are remaining
to whomever and forever
long lasts without lasting.
Giraffes
As Americans, we have learned to live with
a mountain between us that we look up at every day.
Some live on one side of it and some live on another,
as two herds of giraffes might live on a savannah, dotted
with trees. We might have learned that we can no longer
feed on the leaves at the tops of the crowns, but need
to bend our long necks, which we carry on our small body
and relatively short legs, and we have retrained ourselves
to consume the leaves on the lower limbs. As we are
nibbling leaves on the lower branches, we are still seeking
to feed off desiccated leaves higher up on the limbs.
As we browse trunk to trunk, we think of the other herd
on the other side of the mountain; we both have not loved,
nor have we found a pathway, both of us only having evolved
to being giraffes, roving the woodlands without ever satiating
our hunger, by galloping first in one direction, then another;
and we have not made much of a difference to anyone,
including ourselves, and despite bowing and lifting
our great necks, the best that we can do is to spend
most of the time avoiding the wild dogs of our best intentions.
A conversation
He says, ‘Think of your awakening
as the event that it is, that it perpetuates,
that its ascendency is as resilient as
a tungsten filament radiating with you.’
She says, ‘Tell me more.’ He says,
‘When I drive to