Nothing Doing

Of all the ways to get where you are going,
“Doing nothing” is not the least efficient.
Other inevitabilities awaited the fatalist,
Who said, “this is not what I prepared for,”
With a degree of emotion that, in my opinion,
Profaned the dignity of his collection
Of calendars. On the four-thousand-and-first
Tuesday of his life he took them to the bin,
Where they would be dispersed as everything
Is dispersed. This, too, was fated, as someone
Else foresaw. If only someone was there
To see him do it, which is all I think he wanted
In the end. And he wasn’t wrong, either,
Except in the particulars, where life is lived.

Minor Painting

I.

It’s a wet day in April and I’m at the Rijksmuseum
Having a typical twenty-first century experience.
Ten or so meters away, between thirty and forty

People are taking photos of people taking photos
Of people taking photos of The Night Watch
With their phones. Meanwhile, in another alcove,

I’m alone, looking at Pieter Claesz’s 1627 painting
Still Life with a Turkey Pie. As an American, I’ve
Eaten more turkeys than I can count, but the bird,