Measuring Up

Let’s say
you are walking
a trail called Mystery,
new to you,

toward the sound
of rushing water.

You come upon
a stream,
carelessly diving
a hundred feet
into a pool.

Would you pick
a wildflower,
perhaps a calypso bulbosa,
a fairy slipper,
and try to measure
the velocity of a waterfall,
one plucked petal
at a time?

And yet you measure
your morning,
spent trifling
with words
on a page,

falling far short
of the number of
industrious retorts
from the nailgun
across the street.

(Photo credit, Michael Massi, via Flickr)

 

Listmaking

I’m making an
incomplete list of
The Intoxicating and
Mysterious Luminosity of
What Is.

Maybe I’ll start with
The Spotted Cat Club,
Frenchmen Street,
New Orleans.
I think I’ll end with
Jailhouse Rock, Elvis,
before white leather and sequins.

Somewhere, in between,
weddings and wedding nights,
births and deaths,
big white dogs and
calico cats,
the Salish Sea,
the astonishment of bodies.

Someone singing at the foot of
the Eiffel Tower
at midnight on the Seine.

(Go ahead, make your own list.)

Now I will divide the list,
religiously,
like God, it is said, will divide
the sheep from the goats,
the sacred from the profane,
the saved from the lost.

Or, maybe,
I’ll see what happens
if I don’t.