Month: October 2025

He smoked only occasionally
On still evenings when he could
Hear the nearby river murmur
And swell. Who knows
How fast or deep.

Handrolled, inexpertly,
Always a little lumpy.

His earliest memories were of
His grandfather rolling cigarettes
On a handmade wooden table.
Settle the shag on the paper,
Like making a tiny bed.
The boy watched as if beholding 
Some lost tribal ritual.
Lick the little envelope and
Lay it aside.
Neat as a sealed scroll.

In the dusky porch light
He'd sit on his grandfather's knee
As he smoked and wove 
Stories no one could now remember.
The boy's mother and sister 
Listening along.

As he smoked he was aware
Of the cancer that had turned 
The old man gaunt and grey
Before the end.
The smoke stretched into the 
Darkness as he exhaled,
Like an isthmus of fog.

He didn't believe he'd meet
The old man again one day.
There was only the draw and exhale.
Scent of the beginning and the end.

And the smoke moving in
Long curves.
Both balletic and torpid. 
And both present and absent.
But always tending toward absence.

What we know to be true can be
Confirmed only through logical
Deduction, claimed René Descartes, 
Setting the course of Western philosophy
And science.
He deduced (quite famously) 
That he at least existed
—For to doubt requires 
A doubter; thoughts, a thinker.
But beyond that, 
Nothing should be assumed.

For example, what proof was there 
That animals were conscious?
They move, react, make noises.
But this is insufficient,
For so too can intricate machines 
Filled with belts and gears.
Animals are "nature's machines," he wrote. 
Biological automata.
To believe they were conscious was baseless, 
Irrational, sentimental.
A contemporary of Descartes observed
That learned followers of
The great philosopher-scientist

“administered beatings to dogs with perfect indifference and made fun of those who pitied the creatures as if they felt pain. They said the animals were clocks; that the cries they emitted when struck were only the noise of a little spring that had been touched.” ¹

Sometimes know I exist (and only sometimes)
Through reading a poem.
Now and again one arrives to meet me,
And I receive evidence that there’s
Someone in there to be met.

A voice reaches out
And presses a palm
To my naked chest.
And through that other’s palm I can
Feel my own heart beating
Out of the silence.

So I fear that one day
I might be moved by a poem,
While somehow sensing
Or discovering later,
That it was assembled from words
Without a voice.

A hand detached from a body,
Groping blindly forth,
With too many fingers.
But still pressing its
Palm to my wet heart.

And then through that palm
I’ll feel just a neat,
Too-regular ticking.
And utter a cry caused only
By a little spring
That has been touched.

^{1. Qtd. in Rosenfield, Leonora. From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine. New York: Columbia, 1968, 54.}