irreversibility

Six weeks and more, there's no one in that seat;
there's no one at the galas, chasing checks.
Kentuckians inured to ceaseless heat
deserve some slightest clue of what comes next.
The spirit's fled; the empty house of clay
might be sustained as labs would culture cells.
What's crossed the river Styx goes just one way
and can't rebook the slated date with Hell.
Heroics no one undertakes for fun:
machines to breath, and pump, and cleanse the blood...
But after everything's been said, and done,
this turtle's not emerging from the mud.
McConnell's damned us with his dying breath;
he even falsified his date of death.

Fire season

Dim, bleary orange smudge, not even round
just hints the sun's position in the sky.
In parody of snow; hot ash drifts down;
from day to day, we live by AQI.
No glint of older starlight's getting through;
this pressure cooker's lid's been torqued down tight.
The mind denies that skies had once been blue,
when all the palette's sepia, and white.
The atmosphere of Mordor sears and chokes,
as if Orodruin were belching forth
particulates and noxious plumes of smoke,
this time not from the East, but from the North.
Four seasons filled the sum of my desire;
this fifth's a crock of ashes, smoke, and fire.

rosh chodesh

the Eastern hills cough up the moon's last rind
and soon enough, the rising sun eats that.
The new day's threshold, where bare toes may find
an offal offering from someone's cat.
Two orbits, damned near in the common plane
collision courses for celestial ships.
Each keeping doggedly to its own lane,
inevitably slated to eclipse.
Celestial clockwork, tabulating days,
and festivals for Jews who scan the sky.
Or Muslims, 'though their count is out of phase;
such calendars are Hell to justify.
Tomorrow, she'll sink West, behind the sun;
each crossing marks another month that's done.


All reactions:2Judith Gottlieb and P Faith Hayflich

Purim pending

Dim rag of moon hangs in the East-most pines,
to photobleach as soon as it's bright day.
The tidal tug of both great orbs aligns
to lay seas bare as waters ebb away.
Adar impends! An end to many things;
next year, we pray our masks are just for fun.
For now, we play at princesses, and kings
a final fling sends off the year that's done.
Four New Years mark each circuit as we're twirled
'though "this shall be the first of months for you".
A constant as our history's unfurled;
the calendar's ordained, if you're a Jew.
Brief pre-dawn glimpse of sky, before it's gone
ferments in poets' brains like scraps of song.

Be Here Now

The puppy chasing shadows on the beach
of butterflies above him on the wing
cares nothing they're forever out of reach;
the pure pursuit for him's the only thing.
The surfers catching waves to let them go
don't dream that they'd possess the ones they caught.
Exulting in the endless ebb, and flow
the goal is not a thing that can be bought.
The tide rolls in, and everything's erased;
tabula rasa for another night.
Romantic liaisons so hotly chased
are only memories in the new light.
"All's transience" we're taught, but so few learn
to ride the wave with grace, while it's our turn.

slipping away

Old moon's on point of getting overrun;
Her orbit's nothing like our spinning pace.
She's barely up when bleached out by the Sun;
We strain to glimpse her unillumined face.
A generation dazzled by bright lights
buys smart-phone apps to track elapsing days.
What had been patent any starry night,
now lies obscured in urban photo-haze.
Celestial clock displays both time, and date,
for those with opportunity to look.
Precise enough that one could navigate;
the heavens were sea-Captain's open book.
One's free to question if it's worth the cost
when so much had been gained, and so much lost.

all that groks is God

James Hutton saw "no prospect of an end";
ongoing processes appeared the norm.
Sufficient pressures trained brute stone to bend
as documented in its earthly form.
Charles Darwin sails, and speculates, and looks
for mechanisms that might unify
like what he's reading in Charles Lyell's books
of how the seas sank low, and alps rose high.
No teleology, no foreknown ends
just algorithms chugging day on day;
each novel form upon the last depends.
What's disadvantageous gets swept away.
Enlightenment! From rocks, to apes, to genes
reformulated God as the Machine.

It's about time

The moon of Nisan ripens in the sky,
A dusty mirror showing us our sun.
A parting glance at one more year gone by,
with opportunities now gone and done.
And then to dwindle, ceding back the Night,
To stars that bleach the shadows she'd have cast,
contributing their dimmed, red-shifted light
originating eons in the past.
A festival of freedom, pent indoors

by yet a latest plague in the old mold.
While we retell the ten that went before
as if we'd lived through what transpired of old.
An opportunity shared to reflect
on what has gone before, and what comes next.

passages

Pristine white landscapes, stark in ice and snow
grow messy as the weather turns to mud.
It's necessary as the seasons flow;
The skiing can't be prime as fruit trees bud.
I'm not so trim myself as once I was;
The abs that once stood taut, now lurk within.
My chin bears shrubberies, where once was fuzz,
and everywhere I'm wearing too much skin.
The caryatid crushed beneath her stone
that Heinlein wrote about so movingly,
looks different now her fate's more like my own;
old texts transformed by our maturity.
My muddy, battered boots dry in the sun;
another metamorphosis, begun.

edges

Montana sunrise--by the clock--dawns late;
at edges, Man's conventions droop and bend.
In Idaho, it's seven; here it's "eight"
at Mountain Time Zone's designated end.
Jules Verne found drama in the plot device
as picaresque adventures each unfurled.
Whole days get skipped, or must be lived out twice
In circumnavigating a round world.
The arbitrary twelfth part of mean Night
dissects a seamless globe by twenty-four.
A smooth Continuum, like width, or height,
Got parceled out, to every prayer, or chore.
Constructed boundaries tear worlds apart, 

but brute convention dictates where zones start.

when and where II

The 'Longitude Act' dangled the Crown's gold

for anyone who'd find a ship at sea.
For such a story to be fully told
clocks must compete against astronomy.
John Harrison's chronometer came through
a challenge to the gazers at the stars
for whom the only time-piece that is true
must use the moons of Jupiter or Mars.
'Til patents let the Market Forces drive
Invention languished, waiting for a prize.
Scant profit to make innovators thrive
until the law let them monopolize.
The first Tech Revolution was set free
by innovations starting in IP.       

pacing

The narrative, that strolled through "Bombadil"
now gallops through "Caradhras" and the snow
like clocks themselves must serve the author's will
it's Tolkien makes them function fast, or slow.
Abruptly stopped, the Quest seems at an end
that gate's been found but will not let them pass
'til Gandalf laughs and utters one word "friend!"
the elvish mechanism stays latched fast.
a one-way flight through inky Kazad Dum
so far from sunny high-built Rivendell
a pause to venerate old Balin's tomb
then cross the bridge where Gandalf fought, and fell.
Celestials clocks serve Hobbits, Men, and Elves
but Time's a framework we construct ourselves.

crises

Two stents restore blood's flow where it was scant
and Bernie's heart continues its tick-tock.
But episodes like this mean people can't
dismiss discussions of the running clock.
The orange geriatric pompous jerk
--incumbent and presumptive nominee--
may argue he's he fittest for the work
albeit with no credibility.
Two old White men won't turn all voters' crank
full half of whom sat out, last time around.
Liz Warren has two Xs in the bank
and now seems poised to tear the system down.
To disenfranchise based on sex must stop;
this might just be a woman's turn on top.

Pass the Torch II

Joe Biden's neurologically too old;
no voter who's awake should find this strange.
Our current crises need somebody bold
to navigate in seas of ceaseless change.
Liz Warren brings the vigor, and a plan
to teach, to practice law, to save the world...
Miami's shown us who's the better man
'though Trump may underestimate the "girl".
Two dozen others get their say, of course
Kamala vivisected Joe in style!
But soon, it's time to step down and endorse
the one who'll bear the torch the final mile.
The 2020 ballot fits just two;
Liz Warren's turn on top's long over-due.

twin tales

Two heroes meet where only one can live
Achilles cut down Hector in his prime,
then asks old Priam that he should forgive
outrages when he wasn't of sound mind.
Two heroes meet, one's purely bred of man,
the other's only half of mortal stuff.
Each glorious in doing what he can,
unbending, 'though their lots in life be tough.
Two heroes meet, but only one goes home.
Achilles' tomb's uncounted leagues from Greece.
While Hector nestles in his natal loam
Peleides in exile knows no peace.
Two heroes  meet, their epic's twelve nights long
undimmed by death while still we sing their song.

sensei

Triassic pterosaurs ruled Utah's skies
once dragonflies relinquished air-control
diminished from their former seagull-size
while their forbears metamorphized to coal.
Long teeth attest big fish comprised its meal
a minnow'd swim back out between the gap
big pectoralis tugged on sternum's keel
to generate the impetus to flap.
A soaring primate claims to innovate
what long before by brutes had been well done
but Utah's still the bomb to aviate
bird brains can't rule alone in having fun!
Once lithified, the oracle bones last
two hundred million years, to tell our...past.

Blue Tide

Trump's demographic's dying, year by year;
he gets no traction with the nation's youth
who weren't steeped in Joe McCarthy's fear
and won't mistake his bigotry for Truth.
Millennials see through Tim Geithner's ploys.
Recapitalized banks may own us all
but they're awoke, and ready to make noise.
Let WallStreet eat the loss on its next fall.
Dead armadillos own the center-line
but there're no undecideds on the fence
triangulators will be left behind,
if they seek compromise with Trump, and Pence.
Big donors' pawns ain't gonna learn to ride
tomorrow heralds a Progressive tide.

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything

His mind revs wildly, failing to engage
Trump never formulates ideas, as such
his fan-base resonates to seething rage
but fails to see their man's burnt out his clutch.
Reluctant to acknowledge their mistake
believing what's disproven by their ears
his ranting never quite a sentence make
his "policy" is less than it appears.
On such a blank, they're eager to project
the virtues the Obamas wore so well.
The candidate the Kremlin helped elect
now gropes through meetings by his sense of smell.
The oldest president we've ever had
still hopes the world won't notice he's half mad.

stochastic progress

Cetaceans galloping beneath the waves
preserve a land-based quadrupedal gait
as upright Man so often still behaves
like ancestors more fit to brachiate.
Old subroutines are cheap to rearrange
as duplicated genes are free to drift.
Among the clunkers, each time we make change,
collectibles are there, for us to sift.
Conserving features more like the sublime
absorbing bound'ries play the longest odds
repeating throughout eons of Deep Time
produced the physiognomy of gods.
Until biologists learned to do math
it took a genius to discern life's path.

Fourth Age

Galadriel came East with Feanor
the golden West had come to feel too strait
she craved experience, not merely lore
defying Mandos to embrace her fate.
A demi-goddess in the world of men
she came, with passing ages, to feel torn
the world grew old, outside Lothlorien
and maybe she grew bored of Celeborn.
The hobbits' plight evoked her distant youth
before Ungoliant devoured the light
although she'd gazed unblinking at the truth
the fate of mankind's hidden from her sight.
She gave the emerald to the mortal king
and went home Westward, with her elven ring.