We’re Not Quite There

How big galaxies are and how they measure them

So much heat and dust

A house and all its corners

We, one, they, all another day

Another handful of abstractions

Another discovery under the same sun

Always learning to pour forth and pour and pour and pour some more

That’s the click of a TV from the time when TVs clicked

The wood finish of a fine wood cabinet

The decades-long marriage of tubes and sound

And there we go with warmth again

There we go with evenings and evening comforts

Before the notes we’ll never finish and all that darkness

They Built Fences

We built fences

Even while we looked for a way out

And and and and and

Another night with roman candles 

Or wrapped in lonelier smoke

Gather the world around you

Skirts, sea-level, trace elements

A bag that’s a tube that risks being another fence

Somewhere someone is painting a silo

And somewhere else a silo is refusing to be painted

This is a rainy day vs. a hearty stew

This is the space between vs. the space in all things

This is all things like livestock and repetition and forgotten rules

There is a braid that brings us together, those that’ll make it and those that won’t 

These flowers in my arms, this oxygen in my eyes

The gas we’ll save when we get there

What I Meant to Say

I’m sorry I didn’t call, I fell down the steps

Background radiation in the 50s

High definition photography, 4K even

The sunset as the sun sets later and later throughout Spring

A little hop off the last step as you’re on your way

Locking the front door when you’re closing up the bar

Remembering what you forgot 10 miles into a roadtrip 

An important message in a code that hasn’t been broken

Defense making the best offense after all these years

The quiet last days of a national hero

Building a fire and wondering if this is the last good cold day for a while