Nonlinear Equations for Growing Better Olives
Kelsay Books, 2023

Selected Poems

Scientific Method

Owls in the orchestra, hooting disruption.

An old man napping on a park bench, sitting up

at dusk, puzzled by some forgotten urgency.

Through the dark network tunnels the forest mole,

solving for each blind X, as Y’s tender shoots

await a raccoon’s hungry chewing.

Sixty-six million years ago an asteroid

collides with a planet. No more stegosaurus.

You rise before the sun and hit the road,

but the traffic still thickens, and rivers run dry.

A mountain punctures a thundercloud

without an injury we can measure.

A lone humming bird on a branch nearby

flashes iridescent in the gloaming,

toggles from one shade of red to another,

like the blush of heartbeat in all things.

Loops and layers and dots, a scrim of beauty

that for a moment the old man understands.

Baby Owlets Sleep Face Down
Because Their Heads Are Too Heavy

Atop high branches, carefully

situated and guarded by Mother,

as naive eyes stare downward—

the long drop to abyss. Everywhere,

a struggle to unbecome, and become. 

Willingly, the forces that bind atoms

undergird their chameleon nature,

building a fortress of native instinct,

or grinding mountains down to hills.

A baby’s insufficiency needs generous

arms—the insatiable pull to be bound,

pitted against the wild push of discovery.

One life joined to another, awaiting

the precise moment to leap,

its pulsating verb as yet undeclared—

its heart, everything imaginable.

 Corvus

I grieved the blackbird

in his blood and smoke.

I grieved the children

who heard the blast

and saw the transformer

light up like a torch

who saw him fall

grimly from so high

as if fired out

from a homemade canon

I grieved the children

who pleaded for me

to do something

to do anything

who called out

and winced

but soon returned

to their homes

I grieved the old man

who came out to say

it will be dark

before this will be fixed

maybe midnight

before the power is restored

I grieved his old age

as he wiped his glasses

and shook his head

to release the rain

as he gazed at the wires

and bent down low

to grab a stick

and nudge the crow.  

Nonlinear Equations for Growing Better Olives

Perhaps you’ve been given the grace of happy

oblivion, but I think of the stars’ speed every day.

Reclining in my lawn chair pointed upward,

I see only clear blue, yet I know the stars hurtle

through space at about a half-million miles per hour

with little deflecting them but the heartthrob

of gravity. I sometimes wonder if it’s me thinking

too fast, or maybe not even at all—a mere mortal

fluxed by galaxy or planet, thwarted by a tiny virus,

or rippled through by the most benign of forces.

It makes me wonder, as I dab a brow, wiping

clean the clash of unearned serendipity,

my needled imagination projecting far more

nervous doubt than the appreciation of paradox.

In forty years of biomedical research, only one

raptured dreamer ever reminded me of the simple

path, with his bench-side epithets invoking

Occam’s razor, cautioning with a waving finger

and a bent smile, don’t forget the razor!

while I shot the moon with complicated theories.

And now, in Seattle, my little olive trees have only

a smattering of mature ripe olives, while thousands

of shriveled, unfertilized specks dot the branches.

This is an unsolved problem I’ve attacked for years,

and though I’d love olives of decent size to brine

and adorn in decorated jars with custom labels,

blowing through a straw for days trying to move

pollen particles from anther to pistil takes a toll.

After explaining coronavirus and months of defending

self-evident data, taking heat for revealing obvious

conspiracy, and rubbernecking graphs and charts—

I’m left enervated, perplexed, full of survivor’s guilt.

Where some see a million scattered dots, I see cytokine

storms and shining green stars birthing and dying.