Written on July 15, 2020 
 

 
This is Hard, This is Fragile
 
This is hard, like my diamonds
chipped at strange angles
caved in on themselves
 
etched loud with love
and disappointment
resilient against the noise
 
of approaching black holes
but fortified with forces
bold enough to change the course
 
of waves and always hoping
to make long things shorter
leaving to time to leap rather than to fall.
 
This is fragile, like my diamonds
loose gravel all around slippery edges
reality shifting with the stuff in
 
gravity wells marking us deeply
so we assessed damage at times
on the way down
 
and I used to fucking worry
about the landing but some surfaces
never regain their composure
 
after a fall like that. This is hard
in a world that duplicates and takes
everything along for the ride.
 
My 'I' at one moment derives
from your 'you' of the previous moment.
In self locating uncertainty
 
I hover and no one sees me but you
spinning up or down with nonzero
strangeness. By the time anyone
 
notices us at all the wave has collapsed. And then the surface really has calmed.
There’s just the observation, then,
 
that this is hard
and this is fragile
exactly at the same time. 

*Pic is of my 25 year old wedding ring. We replaced it because it wasn’t really something we could renovate. It’s seen over this thing we’ve been doing, Dennis and I, for longer than 25 years now. It occurred to me that the remnants of everything my hands have touched or done are all over this ring and it shows. Happy Anniversary, Really Tall Guy.