Work

When things were easy, I'd ask myself all sorts of difficult questions.
I had the time and the energy to think things through.
I'd wake up at noon and ask myself something like,
"Why can't the pleasure I derive from my dreams
Be stored in me for use throughout the day?"
And just because I had the time,
I would stay in bed and try to figure it out.
Now, I wake up at seven,
And I ask myself, "Why can't I stay in bed?"--
A relatively easy question to answer,
Which I do, every day, with a grunt and a sigh.

Carrying the Piano (For Rob Ingram)

He carried his piano up eight flights of stairs, I heard,
On his back, all alone.
It was the first thing he brought to his new apartment,
Before his bed, which he rarely slept in,
Before his couch and chairs, which he rarely sat on,
Even before the cage that his pet canary lived in.
Supposedly he said he owed it to the piano,
That it would have done the same for him if it could.
For, you see, they had wept for the same sorrows
And laughed for the same joys.
They say when he finally got it up there,
He played, and made all the neighbors pause
And thank the heavens for their luck.

The Wind

What more is there to the wind
Than the shaking of branches and the rustling of leaves?
What more than the sound of the wind chimes
And the enveloping caress that seems to move right through you?
What more than the voice that speaks of autumn on the edge of summer
And summer on the edge of spring?
What else besides the lingering desire for change
And the wonderment that there is no end and no beginning,
Just a circling breath born of divine lungs?
What more is there to the wind
Other than the fact that we are here to feel it?

Empathy

It was shocking to me when I realized I could have empathy
For the flies that get caught in my overhead lamp
And die from lack of air.
The mere fact that I could put myself in their shoes
And imagine myself standing on a scorching hot glass surface,
A relatively giant bulb radiating a hellishly bright light above me,
Surrounding me the countless dead bodies of my cousins,
All who came there because instinct told them there would be food--
Absolutely shattered my own beliefs on the limitations of my mind
And actually, for a moment, made me sympathize with an insect.