Veil Nebula

Stars become visible at night. But it's never night on a star. Hand stencils show where Paleolithic initiates tried to reach spirits on the other side of cave walls. I used to have to go back, unlock the house door, and make sure I'd turned off the coffee maker. Now that I don't drink so much coffee, I just have to go back and make sure I've locked the door. The casts of the bodies at Pompeii could be taken only because the bodies had disappeared. I'm a cast, too—but in the sense of something propelled, moving. People try to look right through me: I'm a blur in history's photograph. Hey, I'm a verb, not a noun, even through right now "verb" is a noun.

Tubus

Mike Crane and I would string soup cans together, but we never stood far enough apart that we couldn't hear each other talk normally. It is illegal to show the DVD of Joseph Cornell's Nymphlight on an oil rig. I'll say this in defense of carnivores: life is a passing through. Everybody knows the body is hollow, anyway. Put a sleeping person's hand in a bowl of warm water, and in only a few seconds wetness spreads up from his lap and soaks through his pajamas.

White Holes

I load dry shirts into the washer, but I take out wet shirts plus one soaked tissue that's shredded over everything. If Caffeine-Free Sugar-Free Diet Cherry Vanilla Coke doesn't exist already, it soon will. I frequently discover another exception to the "i before e" rule. When I'm in the checkout line, I find one more thing on my list. America , another wide open space has appeared in my right sock. When I'm in the parking lot, I think of one more thing that should have been on my list. My glass is half-full. And I get free refills.

Solar Wind

If I eat one cookie, I already know which one I want next. Walking in a field, I'll hear a whistling, but when I turn my head, silence, every leaf still. I thought I'd watch Bunuel's Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; I did, then went on to rewatch That Obscure Object of Desire, The Phantom of Liberty, and The Milky Way. In third grade, I wrote a book report on icebergs that the teacher said was "too bookish. "One May, I read about a forthcoming Charles Burchfield exhibit, and all summer I noticed how pines turned black under the noon sun, just as in Burchfield's watercolors. When Laurel put the Newcastle Brown Ale one the table, I didn't ask her how she knew; I didn't ask her if I'd told her about Claire, a Geordie ex-girlfriend. After I took my first drink, Laurel asked, "So you're David's official taster now?"There's no friction in space. I could reach 400 m. p. h. The speed of error is faster.

Dark Side of the Moon

In Lubbock , TX , I walked eighty steps to reach my head. When the wind blows, adore echo. But the first cave is neither limestone nor calcite. Even at noon, my mouth holds a wafer of shadow I can never spit out. If I open my mouth and lift my tongue, the wafer sticks farther in my throat.