for Michael-Sean Lazarchuk (1946–2008)
   

Why do robins think
they’re better than everyone else
mist draped rain soaked trees
all manner birds hop around

to understand any or all of it
sometimes seems impossible

clean out litter box
enough Almond Roca to
start a candy store

“pleased dementia”

dark invites chaos
light reveals order

the weight of rain cumulative
get out of sync with the vast
swirling force of everything
and it’s a little like falling
but through time buckle
under the larger realization
that an interrelated cohesion
binds me as one molecule
of hydrogen and two oxygen do
bow to the majesty that
holds it all together seized
by its overwhelming presence

the seamless dream of night and day

a single dimension open to all comers
that vast emptiness at the edge of light
there are others
                           myriad suns shape a face

think of it
everything happens suddenly
the phone that rings and no one’s there

read the world a lexicon of perceptions
carried by wave and particle at that scale
the edges blur
                       sensory input overload
and the page of each moment senseless
recedes with a hammering echo

framed by anticipation itself
for half a second a gap bridged
without a thought the void
between each breath and leaf
through narrated memories

democratic cells vote for the optimum
state with their tiny electric applause
shape of mind changed by mood
body configuration goes with it
lean jowl feline bottomless black olive eyes
or plump fuzzy kitty asleep by the fire

preparing for the worst shuffling
through old fears a surfeit of now
can’t wait on the inevitable tomorrow

alone the universe is immense
sharing it brings it down to size
in harmony the rhythmic pulse
like cosmic background music
those moments of perfect pitch
(and the glissando that follows)

abraded by rough air
create dust anticipating fate

tripped on a curb
                             woke me up

ulterior motives days
later become clear
driven by a different engine
bypass frontal considerations
an inner core in touch with purpose
leaves nothing to chance

when doubt comes a-callin’
Monsieur Rene Descartes
                      changes the subject
“You think?  Mon cher,
                       but what to you feel?”

someone knocked a quarter size
chunk off of a Stonehenge
megalith and ran off with it
at first its intended use
in some arcane ritual I could get
as the motive for the theft
but then it occurred to me
it would fetch
      a pretty penny on eBay

the sacred and the profane
have the same street address

now what

I muddied my feet in
a puddle of Aristotle

at the edge of nonsense
where pointlessness
                     and impossibility meet

I was starting to think
like Henry Ford
                   and that amigo
is downright scary

elastic rainbow stretches across
                                    an uncertain blue
I can hear the random
jostle of atoms in Brownian motion

work goes on all around

in the evening pick the ripe peaches
drink the white wine

imagine old blues call and response:
“you know I’m famous honey
I’ll sign my autograph
until my pen runs out of ink”
to which is replied
“and you can bet baby
that’s always quicker than you think”

who can talk of cunning silence
(I had to go open my big mouth)
what way is the way I am now
the way I will always be

my intellect a metaphysical magnet
attracts irony
I people the atmosphere
           where the rubber hits the road
bidden I will go
            inhabit all parallel universes
unnoticed at a moment’s notice

to deny is to understand

dust touches everything
as a reminder of the ever-presence of life
that near invisible connection
to the rest of the cosmos
exposed as a web of relationships
between what catches light
                                        and the infinitesimal