After We Have Turned All the Mountains Into Ideas

and All the Birds Into Metaphor

 

 

 

 

 

            

 

 

 

The building crumbles

                                                       but do we need the building?

 

Let’s step back. 

Where is the center?

 

A human geology layered with civilizations and cultures,

 

                                                                                       grief and ecstasy,

 

the house you live in—

 

in these days of excess

what have we built?

 

 

             

                                        

 

 

 

                                                        At the edges of the city,

                     

 

                 dreams go wandering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                Everything is new,

                                nothing is new.

 

 

The mechanisms of the day persist. 

 

 

Our friend tells us of coyotes

in broad daylight parading

right down the middle

of Eighth Street.  A kestrel perches

on a telephone pole in the alley.

 

 

 

           

 

 

 

If these four lanes of traffic

outside my house in the clear light

 

of a Sunday morning in November

are lanes of a river bending

 

cutting away its banks

like I tell myself when the noise

 

becomes maddening,

and I open the door and go outside,

 

look at the river and jump in,

float and let the current take me

 

at what far banks

will I wash up to shore?

 

 

 

             

 

 

 

 

After we have turned all the mountains into ideas

and all the birds into metaphor

 

will there be something left of ourselves?

 

             

 

                        There’s snow in Tucson

                                and it’s seventy in the northeast.

 

                                                                  Forget

 

                              symmetry—

 

                                                          the fluidity is the constant.

 

 

 

There may only be a couple of subjects

at the roots, love and loss

but that is only human.

 

What is left with all art is a feeling,

something in the gut.

 

 

 

                             

 

 

                 

                                                      

                                                                                         Days bend

 

                                         into geometry:

 

 

A Wednesday morning becomes a rhombus;

by afternoon, it’s a trapezoid,

and by evening no parallel sides remain.

 

             

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

The language of paradigm shifts

becomes tiring—

 

(although it’s true not long ago

 

                                                                          the earth was flat) 

 

 

When the world repeats

 

we are faced with

 

the same scenarios

 

but each present more catastrophic because the present is ours.

 

           

 

Alignments of random points:

 

larger area + more points = better probability

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

After we have turned all the mountains into ideas

and all the birds into metaphor

 

will there be an echo to follow back?