Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras
Ars longa vita brevis
I was wrong about that one too but not too wrong
It’s not that an artwork lasts a long time but a life doesn’t
It’s that it takes a long time to achieve art or rather artistry
Longer than life lasts
And thus a lifetime is not enough to become a poet
So I’m right that life doesn’t last very long

We focus too much on things most of us
And not enough on actions
Consequently we lapse into anodyne truisms
In general
In sufficient generality everything is true
By a rough estimation a noted entomologist avers
All animal species are insects

And yet a little bluegreen fungus
Impels itself through the leaf litter in winter beneath the magnolia
I can’t name its genus much less its species
In general we know much less than we think we do
I can see the winsome pileus
But I can only imagine the reaching mycelia
Living network of communication
Suppositious to me I grant but beyond doubt as to their actual though viewless existence
Formidable in their intricacy
And the pretty fruit it may be more greenblue than bluegreen
Might not be called a pileus
I know it isn’t exactly a fruit like a pear or a walnut
I know that it vanishes in a day or two or three
But it occasions joy

Common knowledge rightly holds
That when the doors of perception are cleansed
All things will appear as they actually are
Infinite and holy
But a fact less generally acknowledged
Is that the world and the creatures of the world
Magnificently thrive by the immanent alchemical infusion
That transmutes world into word
Into that creating word that inspirits dull lifeless matter
And thus joy engenders
For all this comes to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment

I present a habit or perhaps a compulsion
A will to exhaustiveness
As these pages show
To try to rule the world or at least render the world manageable
By pasting labels on things
But despite my appellative reflex
The birds the machines the buildings the trees the consumables the fungi and the people
Continue to do their respective things
They do things
Despite the fact that as recently as April 25 2023
I identified the song of the towhee as that of the bobolink
As I had done for decades previously

I thought Mussolini really did make the trains run on time
So successful was Fascism in practical efficiency one was forced to admit
When in fact he merely terrorized the populace into silence
In respect of the regularity of public services and presumably in other respects

It takes a long time to understand things
Longer than anybody’s allotted span
Even the old magnolia
Already towering and prolific when I arrived at this place twenty years ago
Is mortal
But memory is collective and not solely individual
I remember because those before me remember
The bullshit role the magnolia played in the myths of history
Nor am I the first to enjoy the delicious spectacle of glossy leaf and portly bloom
The fair scent of citrus though the flowers have not yet arrived this May
The roughsmooth triple bole implicated with lichens
The deep cretaceous roots
And thus there is but the one great poem