Things keep moving forward
        with or without our help,
                the arc of history & all that.

Sometimes, though, it feels like
        we’re always looking in the rear-view mirror,
                ignoring the oncoming traffic.

Sure there’s a way forward, sure.
        The question is whether we can find it
                in time, whether we can get the wagons

uncircled & heading off in the same general direction,
        whether we’ll reach the mountain pass
                before it begins to snow.

Hiss-pull, hiss-pull—

When dreams spin ‘round inside my silly head
And leave my fingers twitching for a pen
I think on all the people who have said
“I’m captive of the muses once again”

For those who’d laugh, they’ve never felt the plight
When spirit wants, but words cannot be found
When teasing muse, with visions of delight,
To cruel block a writer’s hands have bound

Yet no regrets have I with bargains made
To those whose whimsy changes with the wind
For visions granted, even with hands staid,
Are sustenance to feed this troubled mind

And when the muses do feel in the mood
They lift the block, so I can share such food

Reasonable Doubt:

orchard’s first brought in —
la belle pomme so golden
slips grasp to smash on floor

(from the Latin eventus: “out of…comes”)

out of thought comes changed reality

“The mysteries of mimicry had a special attraction for me. Its phenomena showed an artistic perfection usually associated with man-wrought things.”

I read it again
as if it were dusted with scales,
as if I had antennae.

“What wants to land even briefly
in the page-glade opened
by Nabokov’s net?”

Limenitis arthemis astyanax,
the Red-Spotted Purple —
that southern mimic,
dark-winged as the Pipevine Swallowtail,
wearing someone else’s warning —
a bluff of venom
in the submargins.

And its sibling form,
the White Admiral of the north —
band of frost
like a wound
or a flag.

A butterfly doubled
by geography, inheritance,
hybridized —
a living negotiation
between what warns
and what dazzles,
what survives
and what stuns.

You say,
“I’ve never seen,
as far as I know,
that northern form.”

Which means
it may have passed you once,
unclaimed —
or perhaps
it still waits for you.

Raining cats indoors
which makes sense and could happen.
Indoors changed to dogs,
-doesn’t make sense, won’t happen.
Sounds dangerous and messy.

When trauma happens,
often numbness sets in
that makes it easier to get 
through the days

But to experience joy,
it is necessary to let the
numbness go and
FEEL the joy

That is positive,
because joy is a wonderful
part of life, and negative
because you will also FEEL pain

There are moments of grief where
a wave of pain will knock
you off your feet and you 
wonder if the joy is worth it

I also think the pain is comforting
at times, because it reminds you
that LOVE was present and that
LOVE will live on, in a different form

I choose LOVE in all it’s forms

I will forgive myself for the poet,
the one who made me their slaughtered darling, syllabic enjambment,
for the crops that never came from the dead but velvety soil,
for misplacing my love into his
warm cave of horrific wonders.