The Good News Is Also the Bad News

We do sign our names to the stories of our lives –

However time and rain might blur them.

We do call “I am!” at the chasm of eternity,

But other echoes echo there as well –

Some fiercer, maybe, than our tender voice,

And Chance perhaps the loudest of them all,

Crying its hopeless gibberish to the stars,

Who hardly even blink in any case

To hear that wild, strange cacophony.

You are the architect of all you are –

But how closely were the plans followed?

Did fate skimp on the materials?

Were the union guys on strike the day your dreams were built –

Or just too expensive to begin with –

And did the making of your fortunes fall

To tender novices or slapdash hacks?

It doesn’t matter.  Life is not so short.

Unlucky?  Grieve it; then design again.

Design again.  Your time is not yet past.

And when you sign your name the final time,

Don’t ratify the chronicle of your slights,

But sign your life.  Be bold, and sign your life.

Your signature is on it either way.

The Tourist

I’ve been thinking I’d like to be a permanent tourist.  Not only when I’m not traveling; I mean all the time.  I’d like to think like a tourist and feel like a tourist and look up at the world around me like a tourist and maybe even breathe like a tourist too.

I’m aware that the word tourist has come to have a negative connotation – or perhaps it always did.  People associate it with ignorance, with vulgarity, with a kind of superficial engagement with the world.  Of course, it’s true that tourists sometimes exhibit these characteristics.  The irony is, when sophisticated travelers insist that they’re looking for “non-touristy” experiences, what they really mean is that they’re looking for the ultimate tourist experience – something rich, deep and pure that gets to the heart of why we travel in the first place.  They are looking to forget how achingly cosmopolitan and jaded they are and to remember that first pure jolt of sheer touristic joy experienced by the novice traveler who stumbles upon the Coliseum at some odd hour and is convinced, for a few giddy moments, that he has discovered something new and wondrous.  (He has, of course – not new to the world, perhaps, but new to him, and of course that’s the main thing.)

The tourist is the one who stares in wonder at places and things that may strike the local as quite ordinary and even banal.  Not just churches and statues, but fruit markets, wheelbarrows, children playing in the streets, cattle being driven to pasture, women in bright clothing.  These things all exist where he comes from, but not quite in the same form – or perhaps it is only the jet lag that makes him see them anew.  It doesn’t matter.  He sees them anew, that’s the point.  This is why it isn’t necessary to travel at all to be a tourist.  You only have to open your eyes.

Winter Colors

You might think snow would flatten out the world –

Smother in white the pale remains of fall

And make a grayness – blank and unrelieved –

Which only spring can bring again to bloom.

It’s quite the opposite.  That whiteness frames

The greens, the distant purples, and the reds,

And by the magic of its contrast lights

Their failing fires, and they blaze again.

A second autumn, this first fall of snow –

A festive memory of warmer times.

There may come days when white is all the world,

And color is a near-forgotten dream,

But for today, the eye drinks full delight

From barren fields grown rich, and boldly bright.

What We Could Try

We could try beauty. 

It’s worth a shot.

Outrage and rancor have had their go,

And left us no wiser, no better, no more complete;

Rage and opinion and preened-on piety

Have come, and stayed, and had their way with the furniture,

And not much helped us to see clearly,

Act boldly, love truly, and revel in our brief, brief time.

It’s so exhausting to be right.

Let’s stop.

Let’s all be wrong, and see how it looks on us.

Let’s finally confess how little we understand,

And then get drunk and listen to music,

And make love under apple trees,

Or just sit quietly, watching a beam of light

Toy with the motes of dust that give it shape.

Let’s just try beauty, and see what it comes to,

And if it doesn’t work, it will still be beautiful,

And we can always pretend that’s enough.

A Song of Winter

At last the Queen of Fire’s fleet

Cuts through the Narrow Sea,

Her home to find, her foes to meet,

On winds of destiny.

At last the crimes of Walder Frey,

Who bathed his guests in blood,

Are answered in the ancient way

Beside the river’s mud.

At last the banners of the Wolf

Drape Winterfell once more;

Oath-joined beneath a single roof,

The Northmen brace for war.

For winter’s wind is wailing;

White ravens pierce the sky –

And the Dragon Queen is sailing –

And the Night King marches nigh;

So from the East the fire comes,

And from the North the snow,

And many will burn and freeze and bleed

Before the Spring will show.

Sacred

Something must be sacred.

Otherwise, it’s all noise –

A blurry static lapsing into black.

Something must be held up

Beyond the reach of the cynical mind

Where sun and soul can pay tribute –

Body tremble with fear and love.

How do we know what to worship?

We have seen through so much.

So many gods put out to pasture –

Diluted beyond recognition –

Castrated into metaphors.

What have we left standing?

Some vague hope of higher things;

Some small reverence for children;

Precious little precious else.

We need to fill the darkness again –

With wonders if not with terrors –

Before we lose that inward self

That long-dead mystics called the soul,

Which we, too grown for such a word,

Might called “humanity” –

Or whatever we like.

But call it something.

Feed it something, too.

Or find yourself alone,

On the black edge of everything,

Clinging hopelessly to nothing –

Nothing in your heart but blood.

The Well

 

The world gives in its bounty,

And most of it’s unseen:

Mute flowers blooming in an empty wood;

The golden fever of the sunrise hills

When all are still abed, asleep, adream,

But dreaming nothing quite as bold as life.

We only skim the surface,

Glimpsing, here and there,

That deep well of beauty above which we live.

The world gives endlessly, and we receive

Haphazardly at best, in stolen hours,

Half-guessing what a wealth of world we miss,

And all is as it should be.  Let us waste

Innumerable wonders while we doze –

Waking, in the day’s last light, to find

A cardinal has alighted, or a ray

Of errant sun has gilded something gray;

And we’ll smile drowsily, and stretch, and rise,

Content to know the dawn will come with more,

Flowing unstinting from an endless store.