Nonlinear Equations for Growing Better Olives
Kelsay Books, 2023

Selected Poems

Absent Without Excuse

Child of paradox, shortstop, math wizard,

jokester, perennial existentialist—

I made it through Either Or

before the class had read Old Yeller.

At recess, I set out across town to disprove

Zeno’s paradox of infinitesimals,

and might have succeeded,

had it not been for the truant officer

who recognizing my curly hair,

marched me summarily back to school.

In detention, I ascended to seventh heaven

in an inkling, brazenly transfiguring

into Mickey Mantle on opening day.

But the detention officer, transported

to Yankee stadium as an umpire,

sent me home with a letter for my parents.

Taking the longer route, I got lost chasing

a bird and found myself in a meadow,

contemplating each green blade as though

the field had a secret only I could keep.

Man in a Green Field

I am not my father’s elbow,

or the shadow of his hips—

but I have his round lips,

and penchant for pursing.

Career man though he was,

wrangling over annuities

and mutual funds, I often

found him wrestling

with the yard’s entropy,

waging an awkward war

against disorder in front

of our suburban home—

pushing back the tall grass

in our ditch with a sickle

and a can of gasoline.

I’d admire the fire

from a window—

though once I crept

closer, watching it burn

an arm’s length away.

His weekends were spent

crafting our scruffy grass—

power-mowing perfect

stripes, holding back

the tide of chaos with ardor.

He sold insurance,

but worked the yard

in earnest, like Sisyphus.

Inertia Violated

It is catalogued in the book of lies.

It is stated categorically in the introduction

and nuanced in experimental method.

You are an ageless battery.

You are a perpetual motion machine.

Yet the sky, the dirt, the galaxy

red shift away from you.

You are brine and bone, the quicksilver

of what you want but can never have.

You are firebrand and dancer,

a concoction of expanding energy.

You are an unbalanced equation,

inexorable flux, a dandelion

unhinged and vectoring in parabola.

Here I am, and here you are.

We could be the wild siphoning night

extracting blue for its black swan sonata.

Or we could be the epiphany of sleep,

the soft tap dance of touching toes.

Forging New Paths

Waking early, as August sun sublimes dew,

spreading lighter air like a blanket

over creeping things, and those with wings,

hallowing their green halls of new grass—

what is it I expect from this morning,

whose fate is to move shadow into light?

When will the surprise of it wake me further,

into a realm jeweled with wisdom?

In this corridor, an interspecies kinship is forged—

spring worm and fly, gulls’ distant notes,

ever plaintive, a line of crows on the fence,

armored like guardians of a deeper truth.

My dog, in her last years, is unfazed by such magic.

She noses the gate open, plods to where she last

remembers her tennis ball, muzzle to ground.

Crows scatter as she advances, more like donkey

than dog, dignified by courage to the end,

kindred under the skin, and in the earth we’ll end in.

Morning Excursion

Swaddled bodies in a cold room, animal sans animus—

a dozen harping birds agree, the sun will rise again.

You clamber from bed, thanks to an over-active thyroid

providing enough serum hormone to activate ascension

from stone, to ash, and finally, to sentient organism.

But don’t threaten the stillness with toothpaste, or razor.

Don’t bet on a sunny day just because you see the sun.

Don’t dare let go of the banister, as you descend

the old creaking steps, ciphering dim signs.

Through the shadowed hall you wander, past the night

watchman who growls, ever guarding your fortune.

Into the ticking kitchen you slip, where resides the spark

that ignites your day. But beware of anything that moves.

Inch forward, clenching your operation manual in one hand

and your GPS in the other—it’s November, rain pummels

your windows, mighty rivers lap breathless at your door.

While You Slept

The boogey man did not come,

nor armed intruder, nor courier,

with their valise of espionage.

This is what did: a green bug

in the kingdom of particles,

not enough to excite or distract.

It came to light on your bed,

dying in the night while you slept—

gone, on its back, to oblivion,

fading in the lull of energy,

like electron, loosed from atom.

The universe recorded it as spark,

Infinitesimal—less than a nanowatt

in its energy book of sentience.

On wakening, you see no sign,

bear no proof, except the faintest light

advancing over domestic objects,

folds and flecks on curtains

newly sequined with symmetry.

Thin Places

The ferry rumbles its prosaic way

across the windswept bay,

arriving as the early mist begins

to dissipate, and the sun finds every

tuft of heather about to bloom.

The island’s lack of trees belies

its wealth of moss and lichen adorning

stone; and the palest green on hills

alloys to gray, a masterwork of subtlety.

Landscape wails harsh and spare.

Jagged, protruding rock, sculpted

once by hand, but now only by wind,

conveys sound from crack and crevice.

Stones, on end, decorate the landscape,

from sea and edifice, beaten beautiful.

The island’s lone Abbey looms solitary,

its wattle and timber still buttressed

with rock, infused with the film of ages.

No stone’s as dormant as it seems—

humming like harps whispering holy odes,

thinning the margins of heaven and earth

where breathing becomes prayer,

and prayer, an unharnessed chariot