Answers to Non-Existent Questions
Because the snow can never cover itself.
Because the doll in the coffin opens its eyes.
*
Because hope survives by using the body of a moth as its raft.
*
Because a beached cloud dies on your lawn.
Because when water drowns, you will never find the body.
Because the balloon holds an old man's last breath.
*
Because dust becomes us when it dies.
*
Because this morning is drawn by a child with no hands.
Because a fly is a saint washing his hands with sunlight.
*
Because every day the dark dies in its sleep.
Aphorisms
You cannot use light to see the light.
Even a bottomless pit has a top.
Absurdity: The sound of one god clapping.
There can never be a partial whole.
How long ago was before time began?
Do I look fat in this paradox?
No matter how many birds you use, you cannot kill even one stone.
The life you want is always longer than the one you have.
Eternity stays open during the pandemic.
There’s no place like nowhere.
The river’s answer to everything is more river.
I can’t say enough about silence.
Crepuscular
Darkness approaches the lip
Of the waterfall.
Tiny claws grasp for purchase,
Hold the gray leaves of sage
That smile through their own fur.
And a prayer blows down
the street--a whisper that has swallowed
its own echo.
Because the snow can never cover itself.
Because the doll in the coffin opens its eyes.
*
Because hope survives by using the body of a moth as its raft.
*
Because a beached cloud dies on your lawn.
Because when water drowns, you will never find the body.
Because the balloon holds an old man's last breath.
*
Because dust becomes us when it dies.
*
Because this morning is drawn by a child with no hands.
Because a fly is a saint washing his hands with sunlight.
*
Because every day the dark dies in its sleep.
Aphorisms
You cannot use light to see the light.
Even a bottomless pit has a top.
Absurdity: The sound of one god clapping.
There can never be a partial whole.
How long ago was before time began?
Do I look fat in this paradox?
No matter how many birds you use, you cannot kill even one stone.
The life you want is always longer than the one you have.
Eternity stays open during the pandemic.
There’s no place like nowhere.
The river’s answer to everything is more river.
I can’t say enough about silence.
Crepuscular
Darkness approaches the lip
Of the waterfall.
Tiny claws grasp for purchase,
Hold the gray leaves of sage
That smile through their own fur.
And a prayer blows down
the street--a whisper that has swallowed
its own echo.
Kevin Griffith is a professor of English at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of four books, and his recent work has appeared in North American Review, Hotel Amerika, and the anthology New Micro (Norton). He has received four Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards in Poetry.