WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER HOLIDAY

Glaciers scoured the North American bedrock
From the Sierras, the Rockies and points East
During the last Ice Age between say, 25 and 15
Thousand years ago, the Glacial Maximum.

They left behind evidence of their activity
In drumlins, U-shaped valleys, rifts, moraines
Aretes, cirques, horns, glacial lakes
Gravel ridges, glacial till, eskers and erratics.

Up until 1850, at the end of the Little Ice Age
Over 80 Glaciers remained in their
Eponymous National Park. Now, almost all
Have been reduced to perennial snowfields.

The Park, absent  its signature feature
Remains a showcase of melt water creeks
Alpine meadows, dramatic valleys and lakes
Edged by glacially carved mountains.

It is also home to an estimated 300 Grizzlies.
I rode a bike through the Park for 5 days:
Didn’t see a Grizzly or a Glacier and its famous
’Going-to-the-Sun Road’ was shrouded in rain.

The best of times the most disappointing of times
Balanced by the physical and emotional jubilation
Of pedaling through mountain landscapes
Engaged in elevational, scenic and climatic changes.

CHAPARRAL FALL

Summer’s heat glazes 
The landscape in shellac:
Dying thistles and grasses
Are Swaddled in a veil of sepia. 

It’s Fall in the Chaparral
Season of senescence:
The dead and the dying
‘Midst the last blooms of Spring.

Revenant bush sunflowers
And Spring’s last gasp, Acourtia 
That like funeral offerings
Form bowers for the dead…

Yellow and pink wreaths
Tossed on the funeral pyre
That daily consumes
Winter’s rampant progeny. 

June’s gloom gone
The way of May grey
‘Tis no longer a season of mists
And mellow fruitfulness…

But a harsh biotic desert
Braved only by those hardy
Sclerophytes, inured to sun
Parched earth and abrading wind.

Under the blistering orb
The dwarf forest persists
Determinedly awaiting
November’s rains…

PERICHORESIS

Consider that our lives
Are events of Relationship
Not set in juxtaposition
But as a cellular bond
Cohering the Universe.

We exist within
A circle dance.
Its choreographic basis
Is the connection that exists
As a divine indwelling.

All of Creation participates
In this dance
Spinning in ever greater
Complexity but always based
On this foundational bond.

We sense its structural shape
Through our feelings for
Ourselves and other beings:
Feelings that pulse within us
With a profound resonance.

It is a bond expressed
As a strange amalgam
Of physical, intellectual, emotional
And spiritual attraction:
We call it Love. 

Ten p.m. on a summer night
A Crepuscular Skyline
Stelae piercing an apricot wash
While Ragged grey clouds
Float across this Empyrean.

Within a beaten-up white Camry
(That simple anagram of ‘my car’)
And from the icy expanses of
La Guardia to this cozy pit
Of worn black upholstery

A relationship flowers:
A certainty that I am at last
Capable of feelings towards
This still strange City, that:
I Love NY.

TIDINGS

In view, the distant hills of Tijuana:
Over the rich wetlands
Bordering its River
A blade-winged Northern Harrier
Flies.

The light-footed 
Ridgeway’s Rail is seen too
Though Deeply camouflaged against
The muddy bank of a tidal
Channel.

These wetlands exist
Under the surveillance
Of birdwatchers
And the panoptic
Eye of the U.S. Border Patrol.

A Sikorsky Black Hawk
Flies, hovers and lands
Over the wetlands
Where the border sits
Beyond the flood prone river…

To the North, on not much more
Than a sand-bar
The City of Coronado was built
To support the construction of
A Grand Hotel. 

This temple of Conspicuous Wealth
The Vast military infrastructure
Wetlands, Beach and Border Fence:
Fateful partners
In The Dance of Time. 

FLUX CAPACITOR

I grasp at meaning
Where I can find it
Constantly returning
To the Familiar
To explicate the New. 

Grappling with Boltzmann’s Principle
I find refuge in changes of state
As in water, ice and steam - 
But now I see these processes 
As functions of Entropy…

Equilibrium can be achieved through
The dynamics of energy and entropy 
Which renders isolated structures
That are essentially immortal
On the molecular level. 

They do not interact
With their environment
But Nature and Society
Are profoundly different to them
Enmeshed in their surroundings. 

Cities and the wildlands
Are part of a world from which
Each draws sustenance:
Inseparable from the fluxes
Which they incessantly transform. 

We feed on the flux of matter
And the energy of the environment
They are us and we are them.
What part of this equation
Do we not understand? 

DIDEROT DOES NOT DESPAIR

There’s nothing new under the sun
Or so they say 
And old Diderot, God bless him
Still has us under his sway.

Why dig up Diderot
You may ask.
Well, in the Eighteenth Century
He takes Newton to task.

Like Spinoza
Old Did’s a panpsychist at his core
He Believes in Nature
Not in some mechanical law.

The Clockwork Universe
Is left on the shelf:
Because for him, matter has a mind
And organizes itself.

Nature must be explained
He controverted
In ways in which
All consciousness is asserted.

So if you believe in something
At your insistence
Should it not be
The Entirety of all Existence?

DOOMSDAY

A new Philosophy calls all in doubt
The element of fire is quite put out
The Sun is lost, and th’earth, and no man’s wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.

 John Donne, 1611

All hope is gone that our World
Is subject to explanation.
Any connection between Reality
And its Description
Has been irrevocably sundered.

Our only surety
Is that Uncertainty has become
The Ruling star of the Galaxy
Our Sun of disruptive dissipations:
Stochastic, tenebrific, shambolic.

The only News is Fake News.
Confabulations, Interpretations
Simulations and Dissimulations
All that is left
Of our shared Body of Knowledge.

Now this ravaged cadaver
Emaciated beyond recognition
Leads us evermore
Staggeringly into an unknown
And unknowable Future.

BOOKISH

I have ordered a book
Called Order out of Chaos*
(A condition greatly to be
Desired in these troubled times).

It purports to explore 
The conundrum
Of Evolution and dares
To question Darwin’s

Thesis of natural selection
Of chance mutations
As a satisfactory explanation 
For The Origin of Species. 

Others have questioned this premise.
In 1982 Rupert Sheldrake wrote
A New Science of Life, which posits
The role of Morphogenic Germs.

(Sheldrake also suggested that 
It was the Scientific Revolution 
That had driven
Angels from the Cosmos…).

Rupert’s son Merlin
Has since written
Of the miracles of
An Entangled Life

In which Earthly beings
Are enmeshed within 
A Maze of unaccounted 
Organisms….

Commingled Life forms
Flourishing because of
Or despite Us
In biotic harmony.

My understanding thus Evolves
One book at a time
Growing evermore distant
From the sureties of Darwin…

And other old ideas learnt
Long ago but now interred
To make room for the New: 
This is The Grace in Aging.**

Ilya Prigogine *

Kathleen Dowling Singh **

ATTENTION !

One fish, two fish
Red fish, blue fish
Archaic ages
Magic stages
Mythic rhymes
Then, Rational times:
Pluralistic sages
Pen scientific pages.
Crimson and Red
Green after Amber
To the subtle beat
Of the Tambor.

In Ken Wilber’s phrases
Human Consciousness
Thus Evolves, painted as
Color coded phases.

CONFESSIONS

Buying a car at Carmax
Is not much fun.
Their stores are blue and yellow
And Cavernous, just like IKEA
Except their car park…

Is mostly cars for sale.
Late model, freshly washed
Respectable cars 
All above Market price.
Because: the Carmax experience.

Which is haggle free and friendly.
But I don’t like it, because it is where
I am exposed to people 
I don’t know…
And people I don’t want to know.

They are the inscrutable, the unfathomable
The generalized mass of people…
From which I protect myself:
Living in a little enclave
Of people of similar proclivities…

And living backed up to
A wilderness where I am more
Likely to interact with wildlife
Than other people. Living the life
Of a privileged elitist.

Thrust into the morass
When walking through a mall
Or buying a car
At Carmax the armor I have so 
Carefully cultivated is pierced…

Those moments outside 
My zone maybe salutary.
But I eschew Life
As it is generally Lived 
Preferring my Sanctuary.

AFTERNOON DOGGEREL

Relative Truths deal with the world as
It is, expressed in Space and Time. 
Ultimate Truth is spaceless
And therefore Infinite
Timeless and therefore Eternal.

Ken Wilber

I settled down
After my Midday feed
With my nose in a book
For a long afternoon’s read.

As I slumped in the chair 
Burdens vanished as a cloud
And my thoughts roamed freely
Shed of their oppressive shroud. 

Then into my mind
There arose such a clatter
Of things far beyond
The prosaics of matter.

Engrossed in reading
Ken Wilber’s new book
Waking-Up to the Infinite
As my feeble mind shook.

Then I sprang from the chair
 In a flash of Satori
 Overcome with Oneness
 In the Power and the Glory. 

ANTIQUARIAN

Fragments of this short stack
Were first discovered in
The forgotten notebooks
Of an unknown antiquarian…

One hundred and twenty-four
Light years from planet Earth
The chemical fingerprints of
Alien biological activity

Were first discovered ‘midst
The pullulating constellations
Of the known Universe: Dimethyl
Sulfide and Dimethyl Disulfide.

Phantom fragments, or building
Blocks adventitiously disposed
On Planet K2–18b
As surreptitious signs of Life.

Chemicals associated on Earth
With viridian marine plankton
Which nourishes crustaceans
Cetaceans and jellyfish too.

Ever in search of Signs of Life
Ever disdainful of the signifiers all around
Lost in the detritus of our ghosted planet:
Plumskin, Ploshskin, Pelican jill.

MORE THAN HUMAN

All is darkness
All is Silence
Of which there is no knowing.
Quickened by an ineffable spirit
It becomes shadow and light.
Its sounds both clamorous and plangent.

We swim in these ambiguities
Only resolved
By an unwavering consciousness
That transcends understanding.
Then, we are at peace
And In communion with…

A divine love that
Flows through the Heavens
Through the rock, soil and dust
Of the Universe. 
With open hearts
It flows through us.

Our world is shared
By all that is.
Our Real, their real
Our Place, their place.
All bound in the web
That binds all things. 

To conceive
Of the heavenly flow
As ours alone
Is to deny it.
It is Embraceable only 
In the more-than-human World.

EENY MEENY MINY ... ME

It matters which stories tell stories,
which concepts think concepts …
which systems systematize systems.
Donna Haraway

On first waking
There was a moment of experiencing
Something outside of ‘Self’.
Then, the abyssal strangeness
Of it all: the loss, this floating free.

This feeling: Of non-categorization
Of non-speciation.
Escape from Entanglement.
The dissolution
Of all those metaphors

We use to stitch our Selves
Together.
This floating free of Self.
This drift into the Void of Being
Beyond the capsule.

The capsule I call
ME.

PROFOUND OPPROBRIUM

Words lose their meaning:
Their original meaning that is -
And over time, all the permutations 
Of their primal semantic inferences
Are befuddled, and words
Come to mean something else.

Take ‘Democracy’ (please!).
In Ancient Greece it was much 
Disparaged as rule by The Mob
And much later as some kind of
Janky representational farce
Founded on either The Mob

(In its best, purest form)
Or on wealthy land-owning 
Classes as in America
And other oligarchic states.
The Representatives, debouched 
By necessarily attendant ‘elections’

Then arranged themselves
In some sort of power-sharing melee
That eventually devolved
Post Eighteenth Century
Into a primarily binary and
Sometimes tertiary arrangement

Of a vaguely oppositional character.
This made for excellent theater
Reveled in by The Mob
And countenanced by the
Oligarchy as evidence that
Their ‘System’ was working -

That ‘System’ being the equivalent
Of the circuses promised by 
Roman Emperors to placate The Mob
Or, in contemporary parlance, The Street.
Given its reeking dubiety, as it is
Promoted by our Harlequin-like media 

Can we please enact a moratorium 
On the use of ‘Democracy’
At least until we shed ourselves
Of the tawdry illusions that surround it
And like the Greeks, accept it again
As a word of profound opprobrium?

IN MY BACKYARD

Never has this oak
Been more manifest.
It moves softly
In the Spring breeze
Its catkins writhing
With saffron pollen.

Beneath is
A holly leafed cherry
The canvas upon which
Its shadows play. Alongside
Are rocks, their lichened faces
Washed clean in sunlight…

Or plunged into abyssal shadow.
High above, there is the rumble of
A wide-bodied jet. It looks
Like an etiolated shark cleaving
The wide blue empyrean
As it arrows towards LAX…

There to disgorge People
Or Product into the gaping
Maw of Los Angeles.
A counterpoint to my natural
Idyll. An aerial interloper
Into my backyard wilderness.

These: oak and plane
Are different modes of Beingness.
Both manifest this afternoon
As a conundrum set to tease
My aesthetic and philosophic
Senses.

ON THE ROAD

The arty types were all over America
Sucking up its blood.
They were mad drunken Americans
In the mighty land…

Feeding on the hypocrisies
Of a deeply corrupted Federal
Government overseen by
Fabulously venal presidents:

Looking at you, Clinton
Obama and Biden. 
They were on the roof of America
Looking over the Plains.

Flyover country.
Land of the Deplorables.
Of no account
Hicks. 

The Arty Types (Archaic)
Have their Reward: (Ironic)
Another Fabulously
Venal president…

After Jack Kerouac

FOR RAVI

Grass bends to the weight
Of a foot.
Even mine, aged eight
In a brown lace-up shoe
By Stride Rite.

Repeated ten times a week
Along the same meadow route
The grass will die
But in its place a path
Will be born. 

My first path:
A very literally constructed
Short cut between house 
And school in a small
English village.

It is tempting to write
(Under the sway of poesy)
That I have been making purposeful
Paths ever since. I wish:
Only like a mad woman’s knitting.

Random, tangential
And often without purpose
Metaphorical, not Literal Paths.
Wayward ways through Life
In Space and Time. 

Towards the end
There is the inevitable
Tangle, which at first one
Attempts to organize
Into some coherence.

Sometimes, a friend 
Will suggest throwing out
The unruly mess - one’s
Constructed Self - and perhaps
There is a discovery.

Under that tangled skein
There remains a vestige of
One’s Birthright:
The Soul that rises with us
Our Life’s Star. 

William Wordsworth

MR. T

Is America’s President
An Anarchist?
I only ask because
His management style
Appears unstructured

His mind
Randomized.
Let me be clear:
I favor 
Anarchy.

His Affect is Neanderthal
And I mean that
As a Compliment:
His Bearing is both preternatural
And of primeval force. 

This is not 
An impersonal Enquiry.
I am deeply invested
In a positive answer
To my rhetorical question. 

Ironically, it would give order
To a disordered human being:
His being Categorized
A kind of Triumph of  
Linnaean Organization. 

Anarchy is a philosophy
Of the Unpredictable. 
It is an Order
Without Rules:
Intrinsically paradoxical. 

Yet, as David Graeber claims
It is a Foundational 
Means of Social Organization. 
Means without meaning:
Of Fluidity not Stasis. 

David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything

WOODPECKER SIMPLE

The foxes have holes
And the birds of the air
Have nests
But the Son of Man
Has nowhere to lay His head.
St. Matthew, 8:20

Woodpeckers work
On the excavation of wood.
Their bills are their tools.
Unlike modern humans
They are autonomous.

Property Relations among
Woodpeckers are impossible.
They have everything they need.
Most of us are subject to
Those few who control our means.

This othering of the many
For the benefit of the few is
Further compounded by the
Energy inputs demanded
In the production of those means.

The consumption of this
Energy is beyond
The control of the many
But it is they who suffer the
Consequences of its deployment.

In Times past
Human Life was simpler
Not Woodpecker simple
But the farmer and the artisan
Both owned and worked their tools

Before steam subverted
That relationship
And efficiency demanded
A scale of production no longer
Commensurate with the individual.

Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital -
The Rise of Steam Power
and the Roots of Global Warming