“It was only when my father died in 2016 that this deep truth of human existence hit me: there are two basic categories of people, the living and the dead, and the members of both categories are equally people. Some people are dead people, in other words.” —Justin Smith-Ruiu, from 3 Quarks Daily Knot There are days…

—Two poems separated by 5 years have come together

Celtic Knot maybe you think I do not know maybe you think I could not be surely I’m not where I go surely I am here with thee but maybe moon is nothing old maybe sun is never new perhaps all stories have been one maybe there’s no such thing as through could be everything is here…

When Bach was a Busker in Brandenburg When Bach was a busker playing for humble coin he’d set up his organ in the middle of a square regardless of pigeons, ignoring the squirrels who sat poised at its edges waiting for their daily bread and work to build its impossible structure of intricacies, assembling its pipes…

The Politics of Wind There is something that loathes a vacuum, high pressure to low, breeze is of disequilibrium, there will be calm without it. The greater the absence here the fiercer the blast from there, the more thorough the vacancy there the deeper the absence here. To breathe, lungs must be partially void, it’s in…

Whatcham’callit She’s dead, he said. So’s he, said she. Kicked the bucket, he said. Bought the farm, said she. Under the clover, he said. Crossed over, said she. Iced with a heater, he said. Sleeps with the fishes, said she. Taken for a little ride, he said. Gone to the other side, said she. Flat-lined, he said. Out…

(Known Miniscule) + (Unknown Immense) is . . . before the sun rose, they rose, they were soft-spoken to shadows so as not to stir them they let blood and would sometimes sweat and spit. when shadows were too cruel. they prayed for light tree’s sunlit shadow: big trunk moves in wind limb dangling, brushes…