Three Poems after Innocence
1.
We expect too much of words and the world
which don’t converge like we imagine
we would be silent and watchful if we were wise
a well-developed form of innocence
whose workouts are unpopular
though they resemble laziness which is wildly popular
mistakenly thought to be natural – like most of what we do
We define too small or too large
reductive or abstract
we need forms of innocence to tell us
the difference and a way past them
Spinoza finds three kinds of knowing
(or innocent ignorance of what we don’t know nor know we don’t)
the first is most common and mostly mistaken
the second formal and closer to truth
which it can’t see yet
the third is truth conjoined immediate and certain
We’ve learned with Keats uncertainty
is a gateless gate of mind through which
what we don’t know mingles with what we do
sometimes as strangers; a lure to curiosity,
a vagueness posturing, hiding unimagined riches
even remarkably well-hidden in suffering
We learn to reason, to be less easily fooled
Although the universe is said to be
80% Dark Matter and Dark Energy no one has seen
It’s silent, does not reflect or absorb light
resists exposure by our telescopes and microscopes
might still be nothing, like the ‘ether’
despite our desperate experiments in labs a mile underground
with huge tubs of liquid xenon trying to lure
their would-be particles into tiny collisions and fractures
shown in traces of breakup light
unseen except as abandoned.
2.
Truth is stranger than we know except at last
when we’ve given up expectation for startlement
when we’re no longer shocked, having known suffering,
known aching longing with no name.
We’re shocked by what we fear or have almost
given up hope for. We’re startled by what appears
when we have no hint, image or concept,
except after the fact, and we’d missed them.
Evolution, justice, freedom? Peace, equanimity?
The words fill themselves in without us
we do some brief catch and release
for expressions they seem indifferent to
yet fast or slow their motives
come to us as ours.
3.
I am, we claim, but who believes us
except those others who spend as we do
profligate with time and energy we happen upon
shedding ownership like old skin.
Some are people, some are trees clustered
around a mountain lake, or doves and fishes,
or old songs strangely resilient as paintings,
poems, wisdom texts. We relax; they move in with us.
The Dog Star 
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