THE FALSE DICHOTOMIES

I drink my coffee with tea 
that is sweetened
without sugar or Sweetex 
and take it black
with milk, UHT and cream.

And I love with my heart
and my mind
the young and the old,
those eccentric scientists 
who blow me away with poetry.

We are physical, spiritual
existential bodies,
born in the celestial spheres
of blood and dung, 
and you 
are an open field.

SOMETHING AND NOTHING

Life is stepping down a step or sitting on a chair — and it isn't there.
— Ogden Nash

This morning I thought you were dead
until I saw your chest heave
underneath a heavy breath
that lifted the sheet then dropped it.

It's something and nothing. Either
could have passed, berthed side by side
like boats. Either, perhaps both,
of us could have gone in a gasp.

Is this getting old? When you woke
I decided not to spook
you with an open casket
that, after all, was never there.

But it nagged me, lingered. Worn ghosts
that walked out of the woodwork.
Fear, from knowing everything
is dissipating like a breath.

ACHIEVING DEFINITION

Those things up ahead and hazy
in the heat fug of the horizon
are dark, tall and straight as a line
of trees, fence posts and radio masts;
distance makes it hard to tell which, 
just as flatness in the land disguises 
distance; it could be minutes or miles
to willowing structures which hide
behind moisture and expanses like
a chain-gang of white lies. Some say
light manifests itself by what it lights
and, if that is true, then light must
be forever shifting, subject to mistrust.
For eyes discern nothing save what
they see and yet reach, always, to know
things seen. Light lends objects being
even over flat, immeasurable distance
it affects an understanding; silouhettes —
things up ahead and hazy —  walkers
on some pilgrimage to where we're drawn.