So how's the weather?

High summer is a fleeting time.
And the pleasant coming of autumn
is the coming of a going.

Against the darkened purple sky,
and the strident columns of light,
and the empty bells,
winter settles,
staid but alarming,
like a slow slap.
And it lasts, bare,
it lasts and lasts. In its absent
presence it is completely
present
as if there were an internal relation
between the concept of desolation
and that of eternity.

In the Ivy by the Staircase

Last spring
Sandi squatted beside the staircase,
squirt pistol in hand,
as squirrels bounded past through the ivy
like breakdancers doing the snake.
Sandi had donned a purple sundress,
left her shoulders exposed,
and as class let out she
crouched, like someone from the FBI might crouch,
to ambush her crush.

I wondered whether

we might commune with those who experience
utter loneliness
by ourselves experiencing it,
like monks rising in the night
to pray for the sleepless.
Or is it of the nature of being
utterly alone
that when one experiences it
one communes with no one?

Sometimes Philosophers Wax Poetical Too

Korsgaard on the idea that emotions are perceptions of reasons:

'I want to emphasize a feature of perception that philosophers do not always attend to: namely, that it is not just a way of knowing, not just an epistemic state, but a way of being in the presence of its object. For I think that is why we place a high value on the emotions, even the negative emotions, and feel that we aren't really alive unless we feel them. To have an emotion is to stand in the presence of a normative fact: to feel fear is to stand in the presence of the dangerousness of danger; to feel grief is to stand in the presence of the infinite loss of death.'

Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth?

While the other two servants doubled the amount that had been entrusted to them while their master was away, this servant took his talent and buried it in the ground, and he did this out of fear that otherwise the talent might be lost. When the master returned, this talent too was taken from him and given to one of the other servants who had doubled what had been entrusted to him. And the master said that everyone who has will be given more, and whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.

Was there a secret kindness in the master's harsh words? Did he withdraw the servant's talent, knowing that this particular servant was beset by many fears, not so that he would have nothing but so that he would be anxious over nothing?

Make Yourself Immortal

Over breakfast I spoke to a man
who asked himself:
Why does he love women?
It has to do with mortality.
Some people fear death all their lives.
He fears never living.
And when you have a wife
and a mistress
it is as if you have two lives.
And at sunset with a man
who marveled about some old boy
from Augusta who was talking about his wife.
He asked him: was that your only one?
Yep, his only wife for 30 years.
Now, a lot of people have only one wife.
But this man also had only one job
for 30 years.

And I didn't know who between them
knew something about immortality.

Another Time?

Will you greet me again barefoot,
a glass of shandy in hand
all lit up by the last of the evening light?
And suggest one more time
after another meal
that we play a game of hearts?
Maybe next summer,
or in some summer to come.