Dear Future,

Hope this message finds you well.
First off, let me say
it reassures me to know that
someone there is reading this, because
Future, you’re my imaginary friend.
When we can’t imagine
one another anymore, I’ll be alone.

(dead vines fed upon by live juncos)

If I turned off the news, Future,
you would cease to exist.
So I make sure to record everything.
If you stay still, you might see the same things
that have always been there. Hence
Enlightenment is often couched in terms of an attack.

(The sound of dispersing consciousnesses.
A circle round the sun is called a glory.
Light is glory. It reflects the snow.)

I draw a circle around my feet and say
“This is my kingdom. The future is a theory
that doesn’t involve me, a sleeve
that crumbles to dust when I touch it.”
After all, I’ve lived longer than
most people who ever have.     But then,
writing has always been a suicide note.
Like they say: at the end of the day,
it’s the end of the day.
And here we are: “Now”
is the bubble we’re inside
that’s always popping.

(Old salt turns translucent
crystal into dull white clots.
Hopeful green stuff; folding laundry. Flopping
like a stewed fish. Who operates the squirrels?)

Future, you’re like death: nobody knows what it is
until they get there, though plenty of people
claim to come back or even claim
to know what happened in the past.
I saw Jesus, back from the tomb,
standing amongst his disciples, saying
his last goodbyes (his last last goodbyes),
his robes brighter than the fuller’s art,
apotheosing into the god of the sun, levitating
to his place amongst the constellations,
to the tune of “It’s a New Day Dawning!”

Future, I think you’re composed of my thoughts
when they outrun my power to remember them.
Tomorrow, if I wake up, I’ll say, “This is it—
the last day.” Maybe then I’ll remember.
Maybe then I won’t have to write.
But every day seems like a day
more suited to going back
to the day before than
the day before was.

Future, you always run
away from us and we always keep chasing.
(I’d run from us, too, if I could.)
But dear Future, one can’t live into nothing
indefinitely.
Exist!

(The wraith-like condensation:
heat-vents on house roofs in the morning—
like watching the waves or fish in an aquarium.
Ditto for the birds: they congregate,
spat, fly down to forage,
fly up to perch—fish with a bigger tank.)

Really, we just want reliable apparitions.
Relatable apparitions.
I’m not there anymore, am I?

What is holding you up, what
sounds from the other room,
how well I can breathe
compared to yesterday, since
the quality of light has changed.
Gravity refracts. There are
specks and swaths of brightness,
but in the rest of the room, where
we live, the light is diffuse,
does not leave a memory to mark it.

We will be OK, a palliative culture,
the paregoric of heaven.
    But there is
no We—just arrangements of I’s:
Argus I’d.
What one person can do while un-
attached to outcome makes it a big short
drama or retrodiction of an insignificant flash.
“The life of folly . . .
is entirely focused on the future,” says Epicurus.
Which is pretty harsh.
Life as a period, life as a lull.

The new map of the cosmos
looks like an unpruned tree,
not a roadmap, so how can we
reinhabit the shape of the sky
before we outlive our endings?
What becomes of all the souls
when the sun finally explodes?

IDK. But the hour is late, and everybody
here looks pretty tired,
so I’ll go ahead and say goodnight.
We will try not to wake you
when we get there.

Later,
Joe