Which way, Billy Pilgrim?

A going back.
I’m going back, or forward. Or both,
and every point in between,
Billy Pilgrim style.

Not a holy place, the place
I began, or the place I’m going.

Not wholly that place, or this,
but a place I can pretend is. There.
There it is. It is

in a wood, somewhere not far,
sheer, copper-penny
snake skins are slipped,
if not where I’d keep them.
And it’s there,

further on in that wood, trees change
but not the wood, and a sound comes,
just the sound, and then nothing more
than a ripple of chocolate-
milk water. It’s there, where now
jumped, and nothing’s gone

missing with the log lost underneath
orange lichen, I’m going. It’s there
I’ve been.

In this sun

In this sun, an apse
at the alley-aisle’s end, all
blessings fall blindly

Be careless with what you wish for

I’ve been in this play before.
I’ve heard
and spoken these lines.

Will I speak them to you?
I will. But first, about this fly.

I'll tell you about it being
my reincarnated friend, Smita.
She’s back to swim in my ointment.
She’s back
to tell me it’s okay to be
careless with what you wish for.

Her soul would fly up among my wishes.
As a fly she can’t fly anywhere
but around me, so she flies to where
I stand and stays in my hand.

I take her
back to that stage where we began.
With no mouth to speak her lines
she still gives them to me. I would say:

“She never understood.
I only ever wanted to love her.”

within the seconds of this,
my second time.

But Smita has me say only
"Love, instead."

[dedicated to two who will never read this]

What the walls buzz at me

Each cycle has its reason to teach. I reach the end of one, and when it’s done, whether I guess it or not, the next season comes to teach me anew. I knew that I’d done this before. Before I could count the cycles, count the seasons I’d lived through, I still knew them and that there’d be more. For me and for others. I may not pass through the last. It may not last as long as I want it to. But, the last cycle will come, and when it’s done, whether I make it to its end, what will come after is what came before, and I will be a me I’ve both known and could never guess.

What the willow lets me know walking past it

The past is
the past. If you can’t
get past it, paste it
to the pasty place on you
that gets no sun. Yes, it’s least
noticeable there.
Not that you won’t, or you can’t,
notice it, turning your head
slightly to the side
to glimpse it
as you’re headed out
for a bite,
but you’ll be able
to pretend
the biting's a little bit
gummier.

Your train has arrived

A Turing bird
whispered to me:
"The announcer's words
you heard, and her
pauses, could be more
human."

when the wolfe fell into a beckett

I know, the going can
.............. as homes go, never again
I will, go again
.............. never home, but you’ll go, or you can
the home I knew, it never was
.............. not it? but then, wasn’t it? it was
once, maybe once. lots were, once
.............. and now not, and then it was, once. ah, that once!

Exceeding

A man’s hand,
not much more than a boy’s, can
reach past his grasp
into a past with a future reach
he can only grasp
reaching it, and his hand,
smaller, paler, smoother, more
or less inclined to grasp
vast reaches

The cat skipped over the moon

Curiosity
thrills the cat with yarns. A life-
less Mars yawns to life.